Review by Sonny for Holy Moses - Master of Disaster (2001)

I was quite familiar with the Germans' first two full-lengths, but didn't follow their career any further than that. There was a massive upturn in quality from the debut, Queen of Siam to the sophomore, so I was interested to hear what trajectory their career had taken from the latter's release in 1987 to this in 2001. Master of Disaster is a five-track EP and clocks in at seventeen minutes, it consists of fairly savage crossover-ish thrash that isn't actually too far removed from what we heard on Finished With the Dogs. However, it doesn't possess the '87 full-length's rawness and so lacks a lot of the charisma that album manages to exude. Singer Sabina has a harsh, ragged line in punk-ish shrieking vocals that here sound much more forced and overdone than they did on FWtD and so are diminished to my ears - I don't know whether the emergence of others like Angela Gossow affected her vocal delivery, but it just seems like she is trying too hard. The riffs are meaty and musically the band sound very tight, but very little actually stands out and grabs you. It's not bad and at 17 minutes it doesn't last long enough to irritate, but I was kind of hoping that the decade and a half since Finished With the Dogs might have produced something more impressive.