Maestro

Maestro

On The Run

Headbangers Records/Big Bad Wolf Records: 2019

http://myspace.com/MaestroTheBand

Maestro from Groningen are one of those forgotten heavy metal bands from The Netherlands. They were founded in 1989 and released two demos in the early 90´s. In Summer 2008 they reunited and recorded a comeback demo which we find here. It´s not really a re-release because these recordings here were lost for a while. Originally, it was planned as a demo single in 2009, but due to a burn-out of their sound-engineer, the tracks were never mixed properly and only released in digital format on MySpace. The band is not active anymore and don´t even have a Facebook page. That´s true underground, haha! Now the three songs from 2009 are finally released on CD in a paper promo CD package. The last track, “Force Field”, is included twice with an instrumental version as bonus. Those are the historical facts. And the music? It´s a mix between hard rock and melodic metal, with two guitars and even keyboards; nothing special, but nice listen to. But the powerful vocals are pretty good, reminding me on AOR stuff, simple and direct with cool melody hooklines. The title track is a fresh rocker, “Goin´ Back Home” is a ballad to relax, and “Force Field” a cool uptempo song, again with great vocals, but – as mentioned above – added as instrumental version as well. To me, surprising is that this “unmixed” demo actually has a pretty good sound. This demo is maybe too good to be forgotten, but not a must-have, in my opinion.

-Daniel Müller-