Stephen In the dawn of 90s, a young Swedish band was signed under Zero Records and definitely raised the flag to challenge Norway's TNT. Not only they shared a similarity in their musical style, Tony Yoanson's soaring vocal is comparable to Tony Harnell and Thomas Eric's skillful guitar handling can match Ronni LeTekro's acrobatic play. What makes this record so special is right on the same year, TNT released "Realized Fantasies" which I think a bit different and missed something big that I found in their 80s releases, and Masquerade smartly closed that gap by bringing me back to the glorious harmonic era of TNT.

Songs like "Gimme All Your Love" is an explosive in-your-face melodic perfection with one of the catchiest hooks you ever heard. This is their best creation in my book, but other songs like the melodic metal gem of "Our Time Has Come", the breezy "Ride With The Wind", and the furious riffage with bombastic chorus of "Wild Child" are unbelievably awesome too. They also have some radio friendly midtempo ballads such as "Four Letter Words" and "Dancin' On The Edge" which I think are very good as well. "Give It A Shot" is another spectacular uptempo track which puts Eric's sensational solos at the spotlight. Perhaps only "Justice" is the worst track here, while some decent tunes such as "Sudden Love Affair" or "Dawning of The Day" although somehow passable, they aren't horrible at all.

You can enjoy a crisp and clean production and with an amazing set of high quality songs, not to mention the extra ordinary vocal and remarkable guitars, Masquerade is a superb catch for fans of melodic metal, guitar virtuoso, and TNT itself. I probably won't label this 5-stars because of the originality issue and some weak songs, but this album definitely deserved a solid 9.0 and remained their best release ever.

Time Signature Incomplete...

Genre: alternative metal

The band's name sounds like a power metal band's name, and the title and artwork of the album "Flux" suggests sci-fi themed progressive metal. Now it's time to ask "What's in a name?" Judging by Masquerade's "Flux", the answer must be "Nothing", because "Flux" is a very 90s sounding album which treads the waters between alternative rock and alternative metal, and the influences from 90s acts like Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and the like.

Musically, there is nothing as such wrong with this album, which contains many solid tracks. The problem is that, to my ears, it sounds like a very generic 90s alternative rock/metal album from one out of many former glam and traditional metal albums who took the alternative road after the collapse of glam metal at the hands of grunge.

I am sure that fans of alternative rock, alternative metal and grungy rock, and 90s rock in general, will appreciate this album more than I do. And just for the record, it is not a bad alsum, it just sounds generic and dated to my ears.