Resurgence

Floridian death metal legends Massacre are back with their 4th album.

A minute of synths open the album with what feels more like a cinematic horror score than a bland introduction, setting the mood for lurking dread lying in wait. Doomy riffs bring us in with one hell of a groove atop chiming cymbals, the band seemingly reintroducing themselves after a 7 year wait since their last record. Jumping from a slower crawl into thrashing, mid-tempo death metal with a crushing production, the real carnage begins. Kam’s hideously bellowed vocals are instantly recognisable with the snarl and guttural styles meeting in the middle for a superbly grotesque delivery while the guitars blend savage 90s death metal riffing with often melodic lead work that adds a surprisingly soulful perspective to the music. The drums sit sort of between death metal blasts (as one would expect) and those classic thrashing beats that give one hell of a bite to the energy of the music. Thus far, it seems their return is in triumph and power has not been lost in their dormancy.

One would think 3 guitarists for old school death metal might be overkill, but here we see them work in unison, alongside the bassist to deliver a daunting and tight sound that isn’t overly explorative nor does it fragment, rather often staying united for a full show of force. While not overly melodic in the riffs, there is that harmonious flare that thankfully doesn’t spoil the heaviness of the record but does seem an interesting choice for a band of this ilk. Overall we often sit at a comfortable tempo the allow chugging riffs and hard-hitting drums to carry the weighty songs in a shamelessly old school manner. Why reinvent the wheel when you were a part of its creation? Thankfully the spice of the solos and the meaty production ensure that these bludgeoning sections while often long, do not become stagnant. There is still dynamic and the record flows with an ease, presumably achieved when you take something that has been around a long time and add young talents whom excel in producing killer death metal.

Anticipation has swelled around such a fabled band unleashing a new album for the first time in 7 years and I must say it delivers. If you want a brand new form of death metal, this isn’t going to be for you, as Massacre are not a brand new band. If, however, like the rest of us, what you seek is a new slab of thrashy, gritty and gnarly old school death metal, then rest assured you will get that here. A titanic opus of Lovecraftian death metal horror from the beyond that must be witnessed in all of its eldritch glory.

Written for www.nattskog.wordpress.com

"My Massacre is more mine than yours!"

So to paraphrase Kazik's words (Polish musician), this is the reunions of Massacre part. 727363. An example is "Resurgence" - their second comeback album. Well, over the course of 15 years, until the premiere of the discussed album, the band were splitting up as often as possible, almost to the exaggeration. First, trying hard to revive the line-up from "From Beyond", and then, by tarnishing its name (I refer to the episodes entitled Massacre X and Gods Of Death) and straining the patience of the most loyal fans (if they have remained so). Unfortunately, "Resurgence" is not a glorious exception. I suspect that if it wasn't for the known name and support from Nuclear Blast, the hype around this album would be rather negligible.

Of course, Massacre has undergone many changes since "Back From Beyond". The most noticeable ones are those with regard to the line-up from which...no one from the previous album has remained. This time the band was led by vocalist Kam Lee, bringing bassist Mike Borders (who played in Massacre even in their demos times, before debut), drummer Brynjar Helgetun and guitarists...in the number of three. In anticipation of the facts, yes, there are moments where Jonny Pettersson, Scott Fairfax and Rogga Johansson actually deviate from the classic two-track guitar parts, but overall it's not much of a good thing. They did not get enough space to consider it something significantly refreshing the style of the group.

Lack of good ideas, customary and not enough a Massacre atmosphere - this is where I would see the biggest flaws of "Resurgence". The songs do not captivate, the production lacks more power, and the whole cd is based on patents that are too simple (even for them) that most of the other, "daddy" death metal bands can be sound more interesting. The whole album is listened to - ironically! - quite efficiently and without as many negative feelings as can be seen from the text above, but this is only due to the low expectations and insufficient satisfaction after "Back From Beyond". Another thing is that after the content of "Resurgence" you are not somehow more saturated...

It's also problematic that the tracks from "Resurgence" do not stand out separately. I would point out the particular fragments of "Into The Far-Off Void", "Eldritch Prophecy" or "Innsmouth Strain" as the most interesting ones, but they also require some effort to list them more broadly (e.g. that they can develop meaningfully...over one/two themes!). With the others, not mentioned, it's - as it's easy to guess - even harder. Unfortunately, monotony, clinging to similar tempos or a general lack of ideas for playing, occurs too often here. So, the impression is that Massacre's return, under the command of Kam Lee, was created only to (in anyway) reply to a former ex-friendsfrom Inhuman Condition, regardless of the final effect and as long as it fits in with death metal style - that I will allow myself to speculate. However, it should be noted that the sequel of "Corpsegrinder" placed at the very end of the album, unlike to the rest of the longplay, does not evoke so many ambivalent feelings. After all, there could be expected the biggest decrease.

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2021/10/massacre-resurgence-2021.html

The death metal subgenre has always carried a rather blatant kinship with the works of H.P. Lovecraft; all but the point of the former’s very birth being a necessary consequence of the latter’s existence. But in the specific case of one of the style’s earliest pioneering acts, namely Floridian trailblazers Massacre, there has been a near exclusivity to the works of said famed early 20th century author and inventor of the cosmic horror genre and the lyrical content that accompanies the dissonant and otherworldly sonic landscapes of their craft. And much like the chaotic world that has been built out of Lovecraft’s mythos, this band has often found themselves in a state of instability, often marred by an all but perpetually shifting lineup and a correspondingly massive degree of setbacks. Even in the mid-80s when the ascendant death metal scene was experiencing a great deal of underground buss, Massacre’s success in the tape trading world via their early demos would not translate into success until the early 1990s, several years after initially going defunct for lack of label interest.

It goes without saying that this outfit’s 1991 debut From Beyond would prove to be both a seminal and formative moment in Massacre’s career, despite the fact that it was built mostly off of material from the mid-80s and was stylistically similar to the early work of Death, an arguably inevitable result of every musician involved having been a former member of Chuck Schuldiner’s revolving door of collaborators. But for an album that was maybe a few years late into the game, it proved a highly competent and compelling exploration of existential horror within a sound aesthetic that was highly similar, if maybe a tad more spacey than 1988 death metal classic Leprosy. In more recent years, varying incarnations of this outfit have attempted to recreate the magic of the original, with now former guitarist Rick Rozz and bassist Terry Butler fielding a de facto sequel in 2014’s Back From Beyond with a different vocalist and drummer, bringing the formula of the original into a more modernized context, but also struggling to court much of Massacre’s established fan-base due to the absence of original pioneering death barker Kam Lee.

Several years later and a lot of interpersonal drama notwithstanding, Massacre would reform again in 2019 under an entirely different lineup thanks to the previously noted original front man winning the rights to the band’s name. A string of singles consisting of two cover songs and a rerecording of the title track of their debut LP would follow, suggesting that Lee’s version of the band would be similarly tasked with continuing the same tradition as the 2014 incarnation. Thus stands Resurgence, an album that manages to continue the same tradition of Lovecraftian-steeped death metal, but without sounding like an overt retread dressed up in a bigger, more modern production gloss. It is an album that is unapologetically old school in its approach, featuring clearly delineated segments of thrashing violence cut with slow-trudging and dissonant doom moments, but also an album that translates the theatrical aspects of this band’s signature sound of yesteryear into the colossal trappings of recent efforts by the likes of Nile and Immolation. In other words, a massive production that features some cinematic and symphonic moments, but still tied to the primitive trappings of the early 1990s death metal template.

From its earliest moments, this album goes to impressive lengths in creating an elaborate visual of a world of dread and mystique. The opening crusher and quasi-epic slough of unrelenting heaviness “Eldritch Prophecy” proves dank enough to rival Incantation at their most extreme, but also has a highly cinematic character to it that makes it an ideal opener for what proves to be a more kinetic and thrash-prone album. The faster grind of “Ruins Of R’yleh”, titled for the realm of the Lovecraftian monstrosity known as Cthulhu no less, brings a similar sense of fear to the table, but with more of a percussive, current day Cannibal Corpse flavor with growler Kam Lee digging deep into his guttural persona for some truly inhuman vocalizations. Following on this theme of exploring the realms of the horrific with an eye for an elaborate visual, the slightly less drawn out “Book Of The Dead (Necronomicon)” employs some creepy ambient sounds and samples that pay tribute to the Evil Dead series, and is then chased by a more straight up thrashing fit of mayhem that’s all but a dead-ring for the late 80s Death sound that provided the basis for Massacre’ earliest efforts.

Though definitely going a bit heavier on the theatrics this time around, most of what makes up this album’s individual chapters is cut from a more straightforward grain. One can’t help but note the late 80s death/thrash trappings dressed up in a meatier mixture of pummeling guitars and thunderous drums that typifies compact and high tempo fodder such as “The Innsmouth Strain”, “Into The Far-Off Void” (which closes on a more atmospheric note) and “Fate Of The Elder Gods”. Between the Slayer-inspired riffing provided by modern Swedish death metal trustee Rogga Johansson and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Pettersson, to speak nothing for the Hanneman meets Schuldiner-like soloing approach of Memorian shredder Scott Fairfax, these shorter anthems just scream old guard Floridian death metal goodness like it’s on the verge of a second death. Likewise, one would be remiss not to note the brilliant drum display put on newly acquired kit man Brynjar Helgetun on the chaotic cruiser “The Whisperer Of Darkness” and the thrashing murder-fest of a closer “Return Of The Corpse Grinder”, though the whole crew just knocks it out of the park with the pummeling violence of “Spawn Of The Succubus”.

This is as much a rock solid return after several decades of failed rebirths as it is a bittersweet triumph, if for no other reason than that this grand display of extreme sonic mayhem required the complete overhaul of the original lineup. Apart from Kam Lee and bassist Mike Borders (who was briefly in the band back in the mid-80s but ironically didn’t appear on any recordings), the link that ties this album in with the initial glory that was achieved back in the 80s and early 90s is found in a highly competent emulation by younger adherents rather than a reunification of the original titans that made it possible. It’s a small hurdle that hopefully every fan of the early days of this band and the greater Florida death metal scene will be able to cross, as the absence of Rozz and Butler does virtually nothing to detract from the competency showcased here in bringing the old ways into the 2020s. Nostalgia hounds will find a grand smorgasbord of decrepit death metal entrees here that will take them back 30 years plus in an instant, while the current generation will find something powerful enough to sink their ghoulish teeth into, so let all eat in moribund health.

Originally written for Sonic Perspectives (www.sonicperspectives.com)