Masquerage – Backstabber

‘Backstabber’ is the third album from Finnish band Masquerage.  The band’s singer, Kimmo Peramaki was formerly with Celesty.  The band was founded in 2000 but it was only in 2004 with the addition of bass player Mikael Kontolampi that the lineup was completed.  The band describe themselves as Melodic Metal/Hard Rock and that’s not a bad description – I’d have said that they’re a mix of power metal, melodic rock, AOR and hard rock.
The songs have plenty of metal elements – nice heavy guitars for a start, and you can hear similarities with bands such as Edguy, Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, as well as more melodic rock/metal bands such as TNT.  The song’s are all well written, have a catchy feel, and generally sound fantastic.

Until I got this album to review I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of Masquerage (there are so many bands to listen to that it’s impossible to hear them all unfortunately), but now that I’ve listened to the album a few times I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye out for any future releases from them, or any UK tour dates – this is a great band that deserve to do well.

Rating: 8.5/10

Track listing:

1. Remission
2. Backstabber
3. When the world comes closer
4. Another sleepless night
5. Rubber band accelerators
6. The roles we play
7. The beach lion
8. Going home
9. Dance with me
10. Talking to me
11. All the heroes
12. When the angels left