LIZZY BORDEN – Master Of Disguise [Digitally Remastered +2]

LIZZY BORDEN returned after 11 years of studio silence with a new album, and one of you asked for the band’s late ’80s album “Master Of Disguise” in its remastered edition.
“Master Of Disguise” is Lizzy Borden’s most elaborated album, a conceptual, ‘mature’ piece of work but with all that ‘1989’ polish and bright sound.

With such a towering achievement as ‘Visual Lies’ underfoot, one that was simply unlikely to be reproduced or bettered by this particular group, it made a whole lot of sense to me that Lizzy Borden would try something different the next time, something even more ambitious.
Enter “Master Of Disguise”, a formidable and fulfilling work which, at the same time, it’s the most accessible of their career.
The straight up melodic hard / US melodic metal brilliance of the 1987 ‘Visual Lies’ gem was subsumed into a more palatable, ‘mainstream’ sound involving catchier guitar riffs and a healthy dosage of rock opera orchestration which rears its head skillfully through a number of the tracks, and the result creates a great level of variation which is like no other album in Lizzy Borden’s history.

“Master Of Disguise” is quality through and through, almost every song on the roster distinct and memorable from its neighbors. What’s more, I view this as more of a ‘fantasy’ coming to fruition for the band members: who wouldn’t want to work with an orchestra if given the choice?
The fact that Lizzy Borden is able to adapt this string arrangements into the music without transforming the core of who they were is a testament to the restraint on this thing.
But the record is special for more than just this added instrumentation, or for having easier, catchier hooks than its predecessors.

“Master Of Disguise” is a deeply personal album which covers a lot of subject matter that just about anyone could relate to. An ‘everyman’ Operation: Mindcrime, if you will, which explores themes of love, sin, aging, and even the band’s own status on the scales of history and rock stardom (or lack thereof), with a few nods to film and horror keeping in line with previous offerings.
You can really feel the front man / first person’s point of view here, his sorrow and wonder. The lyrics are mature, poignant and simple to browse, and the hooks throughout seem to mirror this intention.
It’s emotional authentic, adding new components to Lizzy Borden music with pianos, some acoustics and guitars and percussion.

Remarkably, the group had brought on two new guitarists here in David Michael Philips (King Kobra, Icon and numerous other groups in the ’80s) and Ronnie Jude. Their more hard rocking orientation lent itself to the general accessibility of the riffing and melodic solos.
Most of the rhythms here are simple and effective, lightly muted patterns, or in the more orchestrated / ballad arrangements like “One False Move” or the piano driven “Never Too Young”, they just keep their cool with minimal presence in the notes and appropriately layered power chords.

As for the orchestra, it’s used both in the more intense pieces like the thoroughly rocking “Psychodrama” where it creates a sort of ‘haunted castle’ aesthetic in the intro and then builds to a massive crescendo in the bridge; and the more subdued, moody spaces like “One False Move”. Never intrusive, never even bordering on overwhelming the rock instruments, and tastefully implemented by composer William Kidd and his players.
I even enjoy the use of the funky horns in the phone sex anthem “Love is a Crime” which really help to make that chorus bad ass, beautiful and swaggering.

As for Lizzy himself, I can think of no other album in the group’s history which allowed him so much space to breathe and let his intonation form each line, merely for the complacency of the riffing. That’s not to say that I thought he was catchier here than on Visual Lies, but he runs up and down his range in tracks like “Waiting in the Wings” and “Never Too Young”, proving he had what it takes to sing in a number of genres.
You still experience the requisite, wailing fragility in his timbre, but he naturally had a huge part in the album’s creation and he does not dispose of any opportunity to shine here.

Not that “Master Of Disguise” is a particularly innovative or poetically charged record, but it certainly offers something different, catcht hard rockin’ yet eleaborated at the same time.
For Lizzy Borden, “Master Of Disguise” is a triumph, and the structure and joyous melodic eruptions through tunes like “Phantoms”, “Psychodrama” and the title track are simply unforgettable.
This is still a record I return to very often, and though it doesn’t match the flawlessness of its predecessor, it deserved far, far more attention than it ever received, even in such a masterful era as the late ’80s.
Highly Recommended

01 – Master Of Disguise
02 – One False Move
03 – Love Is A Crime
04 – Sins Of The Flesh
05 – Phantoms
06 – Never Too Young
07 – Be One Of Us
08 – Psychodrama
09 – Waiting In The Wings
10 – Roll Over And Play Dead
11 – Under The Rose
12 – We Got The Power
BONUS TRACKS:
13 – Vampires Kiss
14 – The Orchestra

Lizzy Borden – vocals
Joey Scott – drums, percussion
David Michael Phillips – guitars
Ronnie Jude – guitars
Michael Davis – bass
Brian Perry – bass
Joey Vera – bass
Mike Razzatti – additional guitars
Elliot Solomon – keyboards
Tim Stithen – percussion
William Kidd – keyboards, orchestra conductor

BUY IT !
www.amazon.de/Master-Disguise-25th-Anniv-DVD/dp/B000MMLPAU
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