Band:	Sinbreed
Album:	Master Creator
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	February 24, 2016
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Creation Of Reality
02. Across The Great Divides
03. Behind A Mask
04. Moonlit Night
05. Master Creator
06. Last Survivor
07. At The Gate
08. The Riddle
09. The Voice
10. On The Run

Sinbreed, now short one Marcus Siepen, breaks off another chunk of that heavy-speed-power freight train it has been farming for years. Master Creator offers no divergence from its predecessors - startlingly little, in fact, to the point that the tracklists of all three albums are fairly interchangeable. Unlike Shadows or When Worlds Collide, however, Master Creator lacks strong singles to anchor the album and drive it home.

I have not settled on a numerical rating for this album, which is quite an unusual omission for me. I typically like to affix numbers to my reviews, regardless of how they'll be received, but, truthfully, I cannot divine my actual opinion of Master Creator. With such a straightforward style and such borderline-generic songs, it's hard to determine if I enjoy this for being solid, classic power metal that represents the genre well, or if it annoys me for being unremarkable and cliché. I encountered the same issue when I reviewed Shadows, but with songs like "Bleed," "Call To Arms," and "Broken Wings" making an indelible mark and adding great squad bonuses to the surrounding tracks, I concluded that I must, after all, like the album quite a bit. After multiple sessions with Master Creator, however, I still have essentially no impression of the album. I waver so much over such a broad range of ratings, and it really seems like my tolerance/enjoyment of these thoroughly standard power metal tracks depends on the day of the week.

Sinbreed is a well of tropes easily accessible to anyone even vaguely familiar with the speed/power style; I can say nothing about the band in terms of sound that I didn't already cover in my Shadows review. Every now and then, we all feel a bit like some unadorned, classic-sounding power metal that doesn't take too many risks. I do, at least. On those occasions, I'll probably turn back to Sinbreed; after all, the title track and "The Riddle" are pretty solid, if not enough so to really bolster the album, and Herbie Langhans has a strong voice and a presence well-suited to Sinbreed's sound. Otherwise, though, I haven't felt any strong reaction to Master Creator during the months I've had it in my possession.

I don't like the idea of publishing this review without giving the album a particular rating or solidifying my stance on the album within the text, because those failures tell me that I haven't put adequate time or effort into reviewing Master Creator. I've known other albums like Master Creator, though, and sensing entirely that this album is Shadows minus the hooks, I'm confident in saying that my opinion of it will shift with my mood and relies on little else. Overall, I like Sinbreed as a band, and I can say for sure that I'll come back to Master Creator (if not as often as Shadows). With that in mind, it's almost immaterial how "good" of an album Master Creator is, because it tells you from the very first notes exactly what it intends to accomplish, and it spends the rest of its running time accomplishing exactly that as well as could be hoped; you know what you're getting going into the album, and you shouldn't be disappointed by what you find within.