Review: Saint [The] Sinner – Masquerades

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Artist: Saint [The] Sinner
Album: Masquerades
Rating: 3/5

Written by: Russell Ritchey (Triplesget)

Saint [The] Sinner are a symphonic metalcore band from the UK who hit the scene with their debut The Curious Tale of Mistress Murder, and have since been hard at work in the scene participating in different local shows, festivals, and tours. The band have for a while been teasing a follow up and finally have dropped it in the form of Masquerades.

The first track here “Theatre of Broken Dreams” sets up the rest of the EP, as it shows off the band’s very theatrical style of metalcore. The song starts this off pretty strong with some strong riffing and symphonic loops, as well as the unclean vocals that are very reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada’s own Mike Hranica. However here we already pick up on one weakness of the album, which is the flat production on the clean vocals. It’s obvious that there’s some talent here, but the choices taken with the layering effects on the vocals really causes them to sound more subpar rather than strong and booming as the mentioned effect should do. Moving on we get to the following track “First Blood,” which definitely has an improvement on the clean vocals; overall this is a different song from the last, being more of a brutal and more fast-paced song with a bit of symphonic ambiance. “Left for Dead” follows up and is a lot similar to the beginning track, but then we follow this up with “She’s a Vampire”–this track focuses a lot more on the theatrical style with a complimentary pop tone ran throughout, and is a nice change up. “Set It Off” comes off as a slowed down version of “First Blood” with more of a beat down tempo rather than being fast paced, and much more reliant on fast drum pieces and unclean vocals. The entire release is wrapped up with “Asylum,” which pieces together really everything you get out of the release into one singular song.

Overall the EP is a good listen–not many of the songs actually stick out as a big highlight of the EP other than “First Blood” and “She’s a Vampire.” The instruments here are simple while the symphonic samples and loops are the more complex pieces here. The vocals can be a bit of a mixed bag between different songs but overall are good. Masquerades is definitely a worthwhile EP to check out and I hope for nothing but the best for the band.


Buy Masquerades
iTunes | Official Store