Artist: Master
Country: USA
Label: Hammerheart Records
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2026
Some bands are difficult to describe, either in terms of themselves or their music. What, for example, do you make of a band like Immolation, with a history spanning more than three decades and a substantial discography, where even their weakest album is still better than 90% of what’s released in the genre? Or Darkthrone, a band of great stature with a massive discography, but who have completely lost their way and have long since ceased to be relevant. Sometimes it’s like stating the obvious, or it’s not easy to come up with the appropriate words for every album.
But then there’s a band like Master. With a frontman who’s been in ‘the business’ for around forty years and a fairly extensive back catalogue, they have everything it takes to make life difficult for you, whether you’re a listener or a well-meaning writer. But, funnily enough, with Master it’s the other way round. ‘Among The Seeds Of Death’ is the sixteenth album by Paul Speckmann & Co., and if you were to compare it with the self-titled debut released in 1990, hardly anything of substance has changed. This observation can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, you could conclude that, despite Speckmann’s frantic efforts, the band is actually stuck in a sort of perpetual standstill. That is all the more painful because he himself has long been campaigning for greater recognition of his own contribution to the Death Metal genre, where he can happily shake hands with Kam Lee (Massacre) and Jeff Becerra (Possessed), and set up a club for underappreciated Death Metal musicians. On the other hand, it is also almost impossible not to have a soft spot for Master. There are few bands that carry on ploughing through with such stoicism and determination, remaining, despite everything, the eternal support act or pub band.
Of course, it’s not as though absolutely nothing has happened in the thirty-five years since the release of ‘Master’ in 1990. It’s fair to say that Speckmann’s current band is a great deal better than the one he started out with, certainly when it comes to tight playing or the leads and solos, but at its core, Master is still a band with little substance. The songwriting process can hardly have changed much either, and it is impossible to say with any certainty whether Speckmann’s own playing simply has its limits or whether the band is deliberately sticking to the concept. The somewhat clumsy bass ‘solo’ on this new album makes me lean slightly towards the former, but in fact it hardly matters. The result is that ‘Among The Seeds Of Death’ is a Master album through and through, recognisable as nothing else, both in terms of the compositions and Mr Speckmann’s own old-school vocals.
On the whole, this album is slightly better than ‘Saints Dispelled’ from 2024, the band’s previous album and their debut for Hammerheart Records. The material is slightly better put together, sticks in the mind a little better and, above all, the lead guitar parts come across more effectively. However, taken as a whole, this is simply another Master album, the sixteenth of its kind to date. Personally, I can only give the band a thumbs-up and praise their perseverance, and the same goes for Hammerheart Records for taking on a band as unfashionable as Master.
So, kids, in short: this is precisely what makes it so easy for both the listener and the writer: if you didn’t like Master to begin with, you probably wouldn’t even have read this, but if you’re a Master fan, there was no need for you to read this in the first place.
