loading...
Good. - 75%
What does Massacration stand for? Since their accidental beginning (they composed their first songs for a sketch comedy TV show and ended up being a huge national success), they have been delivering some of the funniest lyrics and some of the most old-school riffs possible. Their inspirations are mainly Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Manowar (actually they make fun of Manowar's lyrics), but they are able to create a (bizarre) style of their own.
The nature of the lyrics is funny by itself: in order to make fun of Brazilian bands that only have lyrics in English, Massacration's lyrics are intentionally written in a very broken version of that language (which may be unintelligible in a native speaker's ears), but ends up being extremely funny and satirical. That works so well that the rhymes become easy to come up with (they use typical English suffixes like -ation) and the more screwed up the lyrics are, the funnier they are. Also, the lyrics are brought to us by the weirdest and highest-pitched male vocals I have seen in years. According to the band's fictional biography, the vocalist "Detonator" sought advice from the God of Metal in order to be the best heavy metal vocalist of all time. That god then told him to chop his own balls off, which he did.
Musically speaking, they are extremely traditional. Actually, they try to make their songs sound as old as possible: By using old-school riffs, Bruce Dickinson-like screams and even the weak distortion often used by Iron Maiden, Massacration delivers something that could be easily be mistaken for a 70's recording. The drums here are not impressive, but the band doesn't have an actual drummer: the one that appears in the videos and is part of the official line-up is just a friend of the other band members, being the drums actually recorded by them (their session drummers wear masks during the concerts).
This album has some great songs. Metal Bucetation has a terrific introduction, brought to us by some of the best screams the vocalist is able to deliver and by a very creative riff. Metal is the Law has a very interesting chorus and some of the best riffs of the album, while the vocals sound somehow emotional for a person that doesn't understand the lyrics. Also, Metal is the Law has some of the most screwed up lyrics I have ever seen, which is awesome for this band. "Evil Papagali"s lyrics make no sense at all, being a kit filled with random sentences about an evil bird. Yet, the song is great, having a riff at the introduction that would be difficult for Steve Harris to come up with. The song starts out fast, and simply doesn't slow down (it even lacks a solo), in order to make headbanging as good as possible. The introduction of this full-length is extremely nice: it is basically an evil voice, backgrounded by wind effects that could be easily mistaken for a supernatural being predicting the apocalypse. Yet, it's just a cake recipe.
The musicians here are somehow gifted, but the album is far from perfect. Almost half of it is composed of regular songs, with no memorable parts. Alright, the lyrics are funny as hell, but you can't headbang to lyrics. Sometimes it feels like they have exhausted their creativity, and sometimes them seem to be unable to come up with new stuff. Anyway, these guys do have potential. Remember, this album is only a debut.
