PERSONAL COMPUTER

A banger of a synth-metal album. This might be as good as synth-metal gets--at least I don't think that I have heard anything better.

An all-instrumental one-man band, MASTER BOOT RECORD has been making these kinds of albums for a long time, but this was the one first one that I listened to that connected with me.

The first thing you will notice when listening to PERSONAL COMPUTER is that the drums are a driving engine; the album has incredible momentum, like a soundtrack to an action movie. Meanwhile, the arpeggiated synth quickly traces out a melody. This reference won't mean much to many people, but the album reminds me of the etudes that I used to play on violin when I was a child: long sequences of sixteenth notes with only occasional injections of notes of different lengths. This adds to the album's sense of momentum and purpose.

Of course, it means little to say that a song is going somewhere if the destination ends up being awful, but I think MASTER BOOT RECORD delivers here too. The climaxes of the songs had a satisfying level of drama.

This album excels within its narrow niche of synth-metal crossover. I considered giving it a 2 because the niche is so narrow and I am not convinced that this album does anything novel or experimental, but I think a 3 is more representative of the quality. There isn't a track on this album that I don't like. The slower ones have less momentum and are a bit cheesier, but they compensate with some piercing climaxes. So I'm going to stand by my high score.