Keymaster - The Lords of Everything (2005)

Cost: $2.00

The album name and several of the songtitles here are clearly meant to be facetious (the band name is kind of corny too, although I could totally see a band using it unironically).  I picked this up not quite knowing if this was a case of a band not taking themselves too seriously, or whether it was just complete parody stuff.  I was kind of expecting super-technical or avant-garde stuff that just played on metal cliches.

The music is straight up, mostly fast-paced power/heavy metal, but the opening song uses goofy high vocals, peppered with even more ridiculously exaggerated falsettos that are obviously a send-up of high-pitched metal singers. The vocals seem to be less irritating in general after that first track and the vocalist is actually decent when he chooses to be, although unnecessarily silly high parts are never that far away.

Due to the generally faster tempos, shredding/soloing styles, and general feel of the music, I wonder if some of the material was less influenced directly from power and heavy metal, and more from deconstructing those influences in melodic death metal.  There are definitely times where the music has a strong melodic death metal vibe...But, well...Without the death.

Even with better/serious vocals, I doubt this would rate anything beyond "just OK" for me.  But hey, it's way better than KeyDragon at least...