Metal Allegiance: Metal Allegiance

Metal Allegiance is the star-studded metal act that has featured many well-known metal names since its inception under a different title in 2011. In 2014 four of those musicians who have played a part got together and started writing original material, with both classic and modern metal influences to be featured on an album that would be released under the Metal Allegiance name. An album which also includes quite a number of guest spots, including lead vocalists and guitarists. Those four persons that I mentioned are Megdeth's bass master David Ellefson, Testament guitar wizard Alex Skolnick on lead/rhythm and acoustic, founder/musician Mark Menghi and ex. Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy who has of course gone on to perform with a multitude of bands. Portnoy and Skolnick appear on all of the tracks, and the majority of the bass work is from Ellefeson as Mark Menghi and Rex Brown (Pantera, Kill Devil Hill) also take a turn.

Vocally there's a mixture of styles much like the music, and the songs are of course geared towards the vocalists. Such as the front men of Testament and Death Angel that is Chuck Billy and Mark Osegueda who serve it up on the albums thrash numbers, including what could be the band's theme song "Pledge Of Allegiance". Melodic metal track "Destination Nowhere" features Trivium's lead singer which I'm not totally on board with as some extra venom in his vocals wouldn't have gone astray. There are twists in proceedings with some cool added touches or I should say surprises like the instrumental section on the grooving "Let Darkness Fall", a track which does have a Mastodon like sound and we actually find that very band's Troy Sanders on vocals. Despite the talented roster behind the microphone one of the standout tracks actually has no vocals, that is the varied metal number "Triangulum" it's melodic, it's progressive and it's shredding. Metal Allegiance is much better than I had anticipated, these sort of albums can be quite hit and miss so you are always apprehensive but this one nails it for the most part. It shows what can happen when you get the right mixture of talent that can actually work together, and how effectively they made everything else unite.

Track Listing
1. Gift Of Pain
2. Let Darkness Fall
3. Dying Song
4. Can't Kill The Devil
5. Scars
6. Destination Nowhere
7. Wait Until Tomorrow
8. Traingulum
I. Creation
II. Evolution
III. Destruction
9. Pledge Of Allegiance

Added: September 6th 2016
Reviewer: Scott Jessup
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 2340
Language: english

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