When I got hold of Wishmaster’s EP Master Of Time I felt sure I was gonna get a healthy dose of Euro Power Metal. The publicity blurb that came with the CD EP said they were from Torino, Italy; well I’ve usually found that Italians are pretty good at the Power Metal. I mean Rhapsody Of Fire are Italian, so how’s that for a benchmark? The blurb also mentioned they were a three-piece – Massimo Frasca on vocals, guitars and bass (well that throws a damper on them touring then!), Andrea Costa on keyboards and Reo on drums. This is when I started having doubts about what I was going to be listening to, I’ve got this thing about three-piece bands, there’s always something missing one way or another, usually a guitar, and somebody has to double-up with the vocals; I just don’t get a warm fuzzy feeling.

Anyways, back to Wishmaster and Master Of Time. After listening to it right through I was a bit confused; what were the trying to do here? I heard at least three different musical genres played in styles I’d never imagined they could be played in. The guitars and drums play, to varying degrees, a mixture of Euro Power, Thrash and maybe a little Melo-Death; the vocals are of a Black Metal strangulated squawk style and the keyboarder sounds like he should be playing at weddings, Bar mitzvahs or hotel bars. The keyboard intro to The Maudit Treasure would have been more at home in a Scooby Doo episode. I’m not sure what sound and musical style Wishmaster is trying to achieve, whatever it is, its falling short of the mark. To be brutally honest, the main problem I can hear is the keyboarders playing ability; or lack thereof. You can virtually hear the guitars dumbing down to the keyboard’s level. When the guitars go into a guitar only riff or a solo it’s like they’ve dropped ballast and are soaring. My advice to Andrea is go take some lessons; listen to as many keyboarders as possible and try and learn their work and style; pick a keyboard hero such as Children Of Bodom’s Janne Warman, Dimmu Borgir’s Mustis or Dragonforce’s Vadim Pruzhanov, get a picture of them and stick it to your keyboard and every time you go practice (which should be for no less than 4 hours per day) you look at that picture and say to yourself “I’m gonna be better than you!”, because what you are delivering in Master Of Time, simply isn’t anywhere near good enough to stand out against the current Metal keyboarders that are around today.

From what little I’ve found out about them I don’t think they’ve toured far. Had they done so they would have some feedback from the crowds how well they were doing. A bottle full of piss coming hurtling at you onstage is a pretty good indicator that you’re not pleasing your audience. Master Of Time is perhaps a place for them to draw a line in the sand; take it as a starting point and build on it. This is their third demo since 2003 according to their Website yet nowhere on the site does it mention anything about live gigs. So, here’s the thing, get a full band together, decide what direction, musically, you want to go, get on the road and tour your asses off for at least the next year, then record a new disk using everything you have gleaned from your experiences. Because sorry guys, at the moment, there are kids recording a lot better stuff than this in their bedrooms on laptops.