Savage Grace - Master of Disguise (1985)^{Release ID: 4083}

This is a powerful sophomore release that features the band's best vocalist, Mike Smith. Smith's charismatic bulldozer vocals propel this album along quite nicely. "Bound To Be Free" might be the band's absolute finest moment on record. Fast, melodic, powerful and in your face. Just an incredible moment captured to tape. Sadly, Smith would depart in early 1986, leaving guitarist Christian Logue to handle the lead vocals on subsequent recordings. Logue lacks Smith's ferocity, but does an impressive job otherwise. If you want to visit the roots of american speed metal, then be sure to pick up this seminal album.

The debut studio album from Los Angeles heavy/speed metal outfit Savage Grace, entitled “Master Of Disguise”, was released In September 1985 & it features some cover artwork that’s much more in line with the LA glam metal movement than it is with metal. The photograph on the front cover depicts an LA police officer sporting a big porn star moustache, arresting an attractive woman who is dressed in only some skimpy underwear briefs with her naked breasts bared for the whole world to see. It all seems so misogynistic & degrading to me & I struggle with it a fair bit to be honest. But it’s also not a good representation of the music you can expect to hear on the album as Savage Grace don't hold back on the pure molten metal here.

The production is nice & raw & reeks of the NWOBHM which gives the record a level of excitement & energy that it might not have had with a more polished sound. The musicianship on display is excellent. Particularly the contribution from the rhythm section with drummer Dan Finch pounding away at extremely high tempos for most of the album & B. East’s bubbling basslines representing the driving force behind Savage Grace’s speed metal-infused heavy metal sound. Actually, despite the fact that “Master Of Disguise” is more commonly thought of as combination of traditional heavy metal & speed metal, I’d suggest that there’s a stronger case for it simply being tagged as speed metal given its general commitment to ferocious velocity. I mean it’s probably got a higher percentage of genuine speed metal tunes than the Exciter records do & they’ve always been considered to sit comfortably into the speed metal camp.

Front man Mike Smith certainly has a set of lungs on him with his voice sitting somewhere in the Bruce Dickinson & Ronnie James Dio camp but also sporting a less polished edge that isn’t as off-kilter as the delivery of someone like John Gallagher from Raven. But there’s a rawness to Mike’s delivery that makes it less accessible than the Halfords & Dios. Lizzy Borden offered something similar to be honest. And now that I’ve mentioned Raven, there’s a LOT of their sound in Savage Grace’s music actually. To my ears their sound is very much a combination of the traditional NWOBHM style of Iron Maiden & the chaotic speed metal approach of aggressive Raven albums like “Wiped Out”. Judas Priest also makes a brief appearance with a classic “er” song in “Betrayer” but Priest weren’t anywhere near as important to the band’s sound as those classic Maiden guitar harmonies were.

The tracklisting is very consistent with only the one blemish in the pretty flat closing number “No One Left To Blame” which is a bit of a shame as it leaves you feeling like things have petered out a bit in the back end. Especially given that the second last track “Sons Of Iniquity” isn’t one of the stronger ones either. But it isn’t enough to kill the buzz that’s been built up over the rest of the album, & I find myself getting a lot of enjoyment out of “Master Of Disguise”. It’s probably just lacking those couple of genuinely classic songs to make it a more special record. As it is, we get a lot of strong material without any real standouts but there’s undeniable appeal for fans of other blue-collar US power metal bands like Brocas Helm.