Death March Fury

Every now and then a band comes along that everyone hails since it has recognized musicians in it, and Masachist will probably be one of those bands. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a super-group, but it has former/present members of acts such as Vader, Decapitated, Azarath (etc), so there’s no question about their relations towards playing death metal. They’ve been around the block, so to speak. "Death march fury" is their debut album. It’s only 26 minutes long, which I know a lot of people will nag about, but I don’t have a problem with it. It’s better to have a release on the short side to make people long for more than to have it way too long so the listeners get bored.

Their sound feels abit like a mix of the early Floridian style established by bands such as Cannibal Corpse and Deicide many years ago, and the European style we all know and love Vader for. I know it’s typical for people to compare Polish death metal bands with Vader, but I can’t help but to do it this time. The music has that certain mixture of melody and brutality that reminds me a lot of said band. Their technical skill is pretty much impeccable, and you can sense their adeptness with their instruments without it reaching show-off class. The music often goes from serious blasting to a halt, where heaviness and groove takes over, only to abruptly erupt into brutality once again. There’s a lot of tempo changes and variety, which keeps it interesting. The growls are of the kind that doesn’t reach piglet-torture and bowel-spewing noises (eventhough the vocalist Wojciech has ’Pig’ for a nickname), but remains just growls. It fits the concept perfectly, as the slick guitar lines add a touch of melody whilst still remaining fairly brutal.

At times the music has such nuance that I can’t say how many different guitar lines are rupturing my speakers, like for instance in "Womb". Throughout "Appearance of the worm" they show us their nack for creating slower, heavier and intriguing tunes, as the track has a serious groove.

But the album does have its bad sides. One of them is the freaking booklet; I can hardly read the lyrics. The booklet (as well as the digipack in general) looks pretty good, but the lyrics look like some kind of calligraphy-writing, which makes it rather hard to read. It bugs the hell out of me when I try to read along and get stuck on a phrase that’s just indistinguishable. But ok, I’ll let it slide and not have it ruin the entire experience.

The band comes off as a tight, massive death metal squadron capable of delivering seriously arse-shredding riffs, blastbeats and growls. The sound is pretty massive as well, but still I’m not entirely sure Masachist will climb the ladder to join their fellow countrymen in Vader and Behemoth as some of the world’s elite. No matter the quality it doesn’t show a lot individuality, nothing that really distinguishes this band from the rest. But I have no doubt they’ll develop a big following if they just continue as a band, and not fall into the category of one-hit-wonder-super-groups.

Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net