Last Tribe seem on the surface to be a rather risky band. They are dominated in nearly every possible way by the creative mind of their guitarist, Magnus Karlsson, who writes all of the music, plays nearly all of the instruments, and decides whether this band lives or dies as he is constantly involving himself with outside projects. His personality is so dominant within the sphere of Last Tribe that the band's official site, http://www.lasttribe.net, is also billed as "The Official Site of Professional Stunt Guitarist Magnus Karlsson." In addition, the band bio only deals with Karlsson, neglecting to mention any of the other members of Last Tribe. I suppose this is more to do with the fact that Karlsson considers Last Tribe one of his personal projects rather than a full-blown band effort, but even so: how could a band that is dominated creatively by a man whose primary inspirations are Steve Morse, Steve Vai, and the hated egotist Yngwie Malmsteen ever manage to churn out anything but wankage in a band setting?
The results are actually better than you might think. Last Tribe makes straightfoward power metal, with surprisingly little relative guitar theatrics even for the style: Karlsson kicks out the jams on pretty much every song, but it nevertheless helps a great deal that Karlsson also plays the keyboards, as it probably makes him focus a little more on quality songwriting. In addition, Karlsson was initially a folk musician on his way to forming his metal projects: he combines a marked Celtic influence with metal here, as many of the harmonies and melodic content here captures at least a little of Celtic folk's inherent moodiness and grandeur. If anything, the band suffers most when Karlsson runs out of ideas, and the band on the whole is given little opportunity to play off one another (a shame, considering that their instrumentalists aren't slouches--the bass player, Lövgren, plays in both In Flames and Arch Enemy). Plus Karlsson's active span of work--he recently worked with Ark of Steve Vai's Favored Nations label--probably means that Last Tribe will be constantly on hiatus after hiatus, which can be frustrating if you're dying to hear their music on tour. As to the actual musical quality, I'd honestly say that Last Tribe's vocalist, Bengtsson, is their best card: he has a fantastic power metal voice that's low on operatic catatonics and high on trained, loud, singable vocals, and it's due to him that some of these songs (which are low on wankage but still kind of generic in the riffing department) are as good as they are.
Here's the album track-by-track.
1.) Healer
A nice, aggressive opener here. The song begins with rather heavy riffing from Karlsson, and there's a really nice keyboard part layered underneath. The next riff can cause deja-vu in a few listeners--that Spanish Phrygian scale he's using is rather typical as far as a riff-writing device, but the interlude leading into the verse is quite effective, as Bengtsson sings in an almost Middle-Eastern style moaning in the background. The verses are quite nice, with an excellent vocal melody and cool riffing. The chorus is a masterstroke of sing-along power metal, and it's very likely that it'll stick in your head for a long time. After the basic repeats of this, there's a ridiculously nice harmonized guitar solo, followed by sweeps galore. Karlsson can certainly play, but on the whole he manages to play pretty nice riffs that don't go totally nuts with shredding. A fast-picked passage follows, and another repeat of that fantastic chorus.
2.) The Chosen One
A great intro here, with a delicious keyboard passage and perfect power metal sustained chords. Another cool riff like the one that opened "Healer" ensues. The verse lightens up for some acoustic work and more powerful vocals. The chorus is another great singalong moment, which is great: it's VERY nice to see a power metal group where the vocals make or break the catchiness of the tunes rather than adding the "operatic " ambience that make so much of it appear silly to non-fans. It says something that I learned about this group from a girl who didn't even like metal all that much: the songs here are very non-threatening, and don't make any of the posturing that some bands in metal can do, but they have lots of badass playing and keep the listener pumped, and those vocals are a huge part of that. We get another good guitar solo, and then the end.
3.) Sacrifice
Here's a rather poppy keyboard part, but it's just great. The verse is very catchy and ballady also, with more great vocals. Karlsson plays a few more nice solos, and there's yet another great chorus. At this stage in the album it's clear that the band has a great feel for highly melodic sections, and certain sections are actually reminiscient of early Dream Theater.
4.) The Uncrowned
Opening with a Nightwish-like orchestral movement, this song has a great marching/conduction feel to it. Karlsson's control over the rhythmic aspects of his playing are quite impressive, as is the way he chooses to layer his parts. In addition, the transitions in this song are stellar: he manages to bring us into many new parts of the song seamlessly. Yet another great chorus appears, although it's followed by another silly "Middle Eastern" metal section, which sounds quite funny almost, as it's a melodic way to sound "threatening;" however, it's thoroughly a power metal touch, so I can't really fault them. There's yet another pretty solo, this time with lots of wah and sounding once again like John Petrucci. The bridge afterward sounds a little like Steve Vai as well.
5.) Otherworld
Opening with a funny, really low-distortion part, the full mix bursting in is really effective, with another great keyboard arrangement. The sounds of the keyboard are unfortunately sounding a little fake and "synth-y" when they shouldn't be, so this unfortunately increases the cheese factor. In addition, I'm not really the biggest fan of the chorus here. Plus, the main riff of the song sounds similar to others written before. There's another shreddy, extended solo, but his tone is grating on me by now. There's a really cool whammy pedal bit in it, though, but on the whole I think this song is fairly weak.
6.) April Sky
This is a short instrumental with some VERY nice acoustic guitars. Unfortunately, I think choosing to include that guitar lead towards the end hinders the majesty it had before with just acoustic guitars. It would have made the eventual crashing in of the whole band more effective to leave that out.
7.) Sound of Rain
Opening with an ominous acoustic guitar, this song definitely opens up being less upbeat than the other songs. The riffing is pretty strong here, with great high-gain chordwork, and a cool drumbeat. The chorus is once again very strong, and just begs people to sing along to it. The keyboards are also much more effective here. There's yet another guitar solo, but thankfully it's a bit shorter and given over to a vocal interlude with cool drumming and orchestration of parts.
8.) Only the Innocent
Another pretty aggressive opener, the opening riff is very interesting, as the bass pedal note doesn't quite fit with the chords, creating an interesting harmonic ambiguity. The next few parts remind me of early Dream Theater once again, and there's yet another great chorus. The interlude here is great, with ominous leads. The guitar solo is quite a bit more aggressive than before too, focusing more on motific ideas than outright shredding, a good choice. I like this tune a lot. Salazar does a great job with lots of nimble double-bass fills.
9.) Full Moon
Once again, though, the group ruins a fairly nice chord progression with a bad guitar lead. This song starts out as really weak, probably because the tone, while quieter and more ballad-like than what has preceded it, it's still not much more different somehow. When the band crashes in, though, we are presented with a great riff.There's oodles of tapped, swept, and shredded leads throughout here, but I think it's probably because Karlsson is running out of thoughts. Many of these riffs sound like ones earlier in the album and the vocals conjure up hair metal rather than power metal. The solos are also nothing new and would probably be considered boring by now.
10.) Call of the Tribe
I love the opening to this. It's very ominous, and those sustained guitar chords over the leads of the keyboard are really intense and great. The verse transition is kind of shaky, though, and the riffing that follows is nothing different from before. Bengsston tries his best, but by now he's not given much new to work with. This time the melodies conjure up Yngwie's vocalists' choices, which isn't that great of a thing. This album started as a pretty sophisticated group, harmonically complex and with fantastic melodies. But Karlsson seems by the end to showcasing that electric talent, and so he leaves areas that deserved more exploration, like the acoustics on April Sky, untouched for the most part. It would have added much more variety to have those type of sections, but instead we get another cool bridge followed by more boring solos and yet more questionable keyboard tones. A decent closer, but it would have been cool to go along with the ominous feeling of the intro rather than to lead it back to a riff-rocker at the same tempo as every other song here.
This album gets a 3/5. It's a little lacking in variety, and although for a guitarist-led-project it's got tighter songwriting than we would ever be led to expect. Karlsson's ego does get in the way of both the rest of the band's talent and the development of his own ideas: concerned as he is with showing what a tasteful shredder he is, he still goes overboard and leaves areas that he could have incorporated for a more in-depth sound unexplored. For an album of solid power metal with interesting vocals, this'd be a good buy, but don't blame me if it starts to wear on you after a while.
Last Tribe is:
Magnus Karlsson - Guitars, keyboards, backing vocals
Rickard Bengtsson - lead vocals
Dick Lövgren - Bass
Jaime Salazar - Drums
3/5
