Lancer - Mastery

Published January 1 2017

*=Staff's pick	Dead Raising Towers* Future Millennia* Mastery Victims Of The Nile Iscariot* Follow Azrael Freedom Eaters World Unknown Widowmaker Envy Of The Gods

Genre	Power Metal	Isak Stenvall	Vocals
Tracks	10	Ewo Solvelius	Guitar
Running time	52 Min.	Fredrik Kelemen	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	Emil Öberg	Bass
Release	January 13, 2017	Sebastian Pedernera	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Producer	---
Similar artists	---

For those of you who aren't familiar with Swedish unit Lancer before: Take a little bit from the Helloween songs that are credited to the band's former vocalist Michael Kiske and then add some of the older Edguy/Avantasia appearance and now you for the most part have the vocal melodies of the songs. Put that description on top of a power metal foundation of band such as Gamma Ray blended with some 80's speed metal and you will know pretty well what this unit has to offer with its 3rd album Mastery.

There is thus nothing innovative or groundbreaking whatsoever on this record, but maybe it could be a very good one anyway? Yes, absolutely, but since it doesn't contain those awesome songs, that would be able to take a record to a high level, I can't really find the greatest attraction to the album as a whole. It's very dated too and the sound picture is kind of a little bit messy and unclear and even if that might be intentional to fit this specific type of music it still is one step out of bounds.

Maybe we're all being too hard and unjust to newer bands trying to get a name and find a place in the world of heavy music, but at the very same time, these band have to be good enough in order for me to choose to listen to, for example, Lancer in the future, instead of listening to some great band that has already proven its validity before. Mastery is not bad at all and it definitely has a number of good songs, but I would probably need to go back to when I was 12 years of age and still hadn't heard the bands that are kind of my personal favorite acts in metal at this point to really be able to get the best out of this record.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	2	4	6	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe