Album Review: Master’s Call – A Journey For The Damned (Fireflash Records)

Master’s Call are a force of heavy metal blackened by death from The Black Country, UK. After marching forth through the pandemic and various line-up changes within the band, the long-awaited debut album ‘A Journey For The Damned’ is finally ready for release on November 24th, 2023.

It’s been a long journey for Master’s Call, filled with trials and tribulations, yet here they stand and with their long-awaited debut album, A Journey for the Damned. It feels like a lifetime ago that we raved about their debut EP ‘Morbid Black Trinity’ (2019), but here we are. Now it’s time to rave about this release too.

Featuring seven tracks of fetid, aggressive, and devilish blackened death metal, the album begins in sinister fashion with All Hope in Fire. Master’s Call emerging from the darkness with death and destruction in mind. Something that is quickly realised as the track comes to life and the chaos of heaviness arrives with aplomb. Continuing into Beyond the Gates, where they really let the blackness in their soul come forth. It is one of the more savage efforts on an album that embodies that exact word.

Although that might seem par for the course when Master’s Call are dredging the River Styx to find the wicked and horrifying heaviness of The Serpent’s Rise. One of the best tracks on the entire album. Or when they’re hitting with such instrumental power and vocal devastation as they do on the delectable Blood On the Altar.

It’s startling just how far they’ve come as a band, taking all their frustrations over the past few years to deliver something truly unforgettable. It’s almost celebratory in style, even if this event is warped by perverse blackened death metal heaviness. It’s something everyone who has a taste for this kind of extreme will enjoy. Take the likes of Damnation’s Black Winds, with its vicious riffs and bone-crunching drums. Into the Abyss Once More, with its garish splendour and chaotic explosiveness, and Pathways. A finale that is as extensively wild and furious as anything that came before.

Yet it also shows off that Master’s Call excess is never too much. They can pack a track like this with all manner of delights, and it still satisfy.

Long-awaited and much anticipated, A Journey For The Damned is worth every second of your time. Master’s Call have finally arrived and here’s to their very bright future.

Master’s Call – A Journey For The Damned Track Listing:

1. All Hope In Fire
2. Beyond The Gates
3. The Serpent’s Rise
4. Blood On The Altar
5. Damnation’s Black Winds
6. Into The Abyss Once More
7. Pathways

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