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SAVAGE MASTER
Those Who Hunt At Night

Shadow Kingdom (2022)
Rating: 7/10

Those pesky Kentucky midnight marauders Savage Master are back, swatting the pandemic era like an unwanted fly with their fourth full-length opus. Those Who Hunt At Night is a classy, stomping nod to the myth and magic of the 80s where candles flicker in dim n’ dusty rooms and Stacey Savage’s charming squawks resonate around the cold walls in tandem with a selection of meaty chugging riffs. It’s standard, predictable metal for sure, but it evokes images of old flames and conjures smells of 80s metal magazines and teenage bedrooms adorned in leering horror posters.

‘Hunt At Night’ is proof that Stacey, for all her oomph, can be a little off kilter with those warbles. but such expressions merely add to the musty fragrance of this dungeon metal and all its formulaic but fun theatrics. The rattling ‘Eyes Behind The Stars’ fuses neo-Gothic mid-80s trad’ metal with an almost new wave melody, more so in its vocal delivery. Debbie Harry (Blondie) wouldn’t be out of place crooning over this one, but as the album unravels it’s hard not to be bewitched by its gallops as John W. Littlejohn provides extra steel on the percussive rearguard.

‘Rain Of Tears’ simmers nicely until it steps into the death rattle groove, ‘The Hangman’s Tree’ brings a sharper, cutting riff execution and dramatic opening scenario before its standard gallop, and the devilishly titled ‘Queen Satan’ hammers heavily like some lost thrash gem from 1986 then slips into a struttin’, yet almost doomy groove.

Savage Master sticks to its plan with each release. One can imagine the combo unrolling yellowed scrolls and scrawling, in blood, the arrangements for each track and then gathering weapons of instrumentation before embarking, countryside, to their rustic studio warmed only by a flickering log fire.

‘Vaster Empires’, with its swashbuckling axework, and ‘Spirit Of Death’, with its NWOBHM-styled loping and punky jollity, add further to the fire as ghoulish echoes bounce off those stone walls prompting the imagination to run wild.

Those Who Hunt At Night is good, solid heavy metal that’ll warm the cockles, sharpen the swords and accompany you into the heart of winter beneath that wolfskin loin cloth.

Neil Arnold

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