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MASSACRE “Necrolution”
MASSACRE “Necrolution”
By Dr. Abner Mality
MASSACRE not only stubbornly resist any progression in their sound, they actively seek to evolve...in reverse! They are very up front about their desire to make “Necrolution” a trip back in time to the earliest days of the death metal movement. Even the logo on my promo copy look like it was drawn by hand on a cassette insert!
If any band has the right to “go primitive”, it’s these guys, one of the forefathers of the “caveman” death metal that so many bands are doing these days. “Necrolution” actually sounds like the record that came out BEFORE “From Beyond”, not after! The only question we really need to ask is: does it work? The answer is kind of tricky, but I’d say it generally lands on the positive side. The best tracks here...the beautifully brutal simplicity of “Shriek fo the Castle Freak”, the bulldozing “The Things That Were And Shall Be”, the Lovecraft tribute “The Colour Out of Space...have the best aspects of something that could have come off a Florida demo tape in 1988. Those match up well with the MASSACRE of “From Beyond”.
Other tracks seem kind of like OSDM by the numbers. The opener “Fear Of The Unknown” and “Shroud of Shadows” technically hit the right marks, but just seem to go in and out of your ears. They represent the other side of vintage demo-era death metal...half-formed tracks, groping for the full power of what is yet to be. Not bad, but not that great either. Most songs lay between these two poles and with 16 tracks here (3 being intros), you have a lot of choose from. As always, Kam Lee’s growls are superb; they set the standard for the genre. He’s joined by big names like PAGANIZER’s Rogga Johansson and WOMBBATH’s Jonny Peterson, who are more than competent DM hands, and original drummer Mike Borders.
This is a nostalgic trip back in time for sure and if you were too young to know what the demo era of death metal was like, “Necrolution” is a fine introduction. In this case, devolution is evolution.
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