Reqviem

Masacre started in 1988 simultaneous to the exploding death metal scenes in America and Europe. Masacre play a South American style of death metal. The music on Requiem is a hybrid behemoth of great guitar riffs, an excellent rhythm section, primordial vocals, and primitive jungle blasts underpinned by melody.

Requiem is an outstanding mix of fast and mid paced death metal cut with cryptic doomy parts and melody. In dexterously shifting tempos throughout songs, Masacre build tension for blast beats, bridge, solo or a heavy hook to the main riff. Masacre know how to play heavy palm muted headbanging riffs, and Requiem is loaded with 'em. Well placed melodic licks, melody leads, and solos refine the primeval riffs, rhythms, painful screams, and blasts by offsetting the heaviness of the music. Alex Oquendo's deeply primal growls and screams convey hostility, pain, sorrow, loss, and hatred with conviction. The production is muffled like a thin blanket over speakers. Yet, the sheer heaviness remains showing the absolute primitive brutality of Requiem.

Like the jungles of Colombia, Requiem is savage and beautiful. The music of Masacre reflect the pain and suffering of late 1980s Medellin where lives were cut short fast 'n' bloody on the streets where Pablo Escobar's drug wars routinely killed people. That narrative and similar others reflecting culture and religious decay add realism to the death metal on Requiem.

Masacre epitomizes death metal in musical originality, barbarism, and conviction. Musically, Masacre is as creative as their American, European, and worldwide contemporaries of the late 1980s to mid 1990s. Requiem is an exceptional debut from Masacre, and it's a CD worth owning.