Origin:	New York City, New York, USA
Genres:	Traditional Metal

Metal Allegiance

The term "supergroup" is tossed around so carelessly in reviews that it's lost almost all meaning -- just because a band has a couple of members that also are in another band does not warrant the supergroup tag. Here, though, one must admit that a band that features three metal titans in Alex Skolnick, Dave Ellefson, and Mike Portnoy might just earn the title after all. Besides that, this project has gone the route of recruiting guest vocalists for each song, and the list of folks that have been featured here is a true who's-who of standout metal singers, from Phil Anselmo to Chuck Billy to John Bush to Max Cavalera and on and on. And all that talent doesn't go to waste, the musicianship and vocals are certainly as top-notch as their pedigrees would dictate. If there's a downside, it's that the various singers (all quite different from each other) and a general lack of a specific direction aside from just putting out fine metal songs leaves everything a bit, well, vanilla. Even the project name Metal Allegiance doesn't seem to say anything other than "we play metal". Perhaps all this explains that, given all the names here, the whole affair hasn't generated a ton of buzz and the albums (two as of this writing) have more or less come out without a lot of promotion or fanfare. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but in general there isn't a lot here that rises to the essential listening level.