Album Details

• Artist: The Last Act
• Album: Still Standing
• Label: indie
• Year of Release: 2010
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: mark_morton on 2011-03-02

Hailing from Calgary, Alberta (that's Canada for you kids playing the home game), The Last Act blasts off with some 1980s-styled, post-Joan Jett bar rock, emulating early Metallica song structures, while tonally emitting the grit of the era's power-sleaze bands - not too far removed from Exciter and Anvil. And yet, each song has a lot going on, by way of tight counter-point melodies, complex Megadeth-ish bass lines, and a Sabbatherian doomsaying aura.

Vocalist Jason Turnbull sounds like a classic throwback metal singer with modern sensibility; like a blend of Udo Dirkschneider (Accept), Lips (Anvil), and Luis Maldonado (Into the Presence) with a delivery that rivals early-day Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche) in passion, but not in range.

As a unit, The Last Act comes across as the local opener who opens for the opener at a metal show - the one that impresses you because a band from the immediate vicinity has the ability to create a catchy sound; however, like all local bands, they are rough around the edges and require additional time and seasoning before the stew tastes just right.

It is not exactly the kind of metal I would see young people latching onto, but if you put The Last Act in a bar, and I'd bet that they would go over like gangbusters, especially after knocking back a few.

To its credit, The Last Act plays heavy metal in its most traditional form, completely ignorant of the trappings associated with the modern metal movement. And it is time-capsule bands like this that we need in this day and age to remind us where we have been, so we can understand where we are and where we may go.

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