LA MASQUERADE INFERNALE

Imagine an old horror film from the 1930's/1940's and that creepy gothic pump organ that looms in the background. Put that seventy years in the future, LA MASQUERADE INFERNALE might just be that type of music with thick metal guitars. A darker, creepier Black Sabbath meets keys equally as bombastic as those of Par Lindh Project, and then put a singer over the top who sounds like he has problems.

Most of the album is pretty overdone in the dramatics, the bombast, the heaviness, yet MASQUERADE is the type of album where I can bypass all of that and take it as a fun album to listen to. This isn't the most instantly accessible album, but how tight the ideas are stitched and how well the album flows as a whole keeps my curiosity level on notice. ''Master of Disguise'' and ''The Chaos Path'' in particular set the tone of the whole album.

Yes this is twisted and demented, but it's a treat. If you feel that this is way too over-the-top, try to sit back and not take MASQUERADE seriously. The metal riffs themselves are good enough to stand on their own merit to the point where everything else is icing even if everything else sounds silly.