It no longer makes sense to speak of “heavy metal” because the genre has its own identity. It is metal music, and “heavy metal” is now the kind of stuff that people listened to after Boomer rock lost its oomph, probably ending with the first Metallica album.
Nor does it make sense to have metal diaries, listening parties, or coffee klatsches. We have metal listening raids where we swoop in, blast something at top volume, consume intoxicants, worship Lucifer and Dionysos, then abscond into the nocturnal void leaving a flaming ruin.
For our first metal listening raid, we revisit the classic of Tampa-styled metal, Massacre From Beyond (1991). Although many like to talk about the various Florida bands, most of them were not really from Florida, and the Tampa sound was all over the place.
However, if you wanted a definitive statement that was more metal than Death and more violent than that one great Obituary album, consider Massacre. With the rhythm section of Terry Butler and Bill Andrews that powered classic Death, the vocals of Kam Lee, and the imaginative elemental guitar work of Rick “Rozz” Delillo, this album packs a ton of power.
It is also a total hybrid. The heavy metal riffs sneak in and a few d-beat riffs, analogous to Carnage or Nihilist, worm their way into these songs, but so do pure death metal riffs which combine the grandeur of Black Sabbath with the leveling literalism of the Cro-Mags.
Staged like adventure horror movies or sci-fi epics, these songs unroll like forgotten subconscious journeys through subterranean passages between worlds, luring us in with compelling rhythms and then introducing a conflict that resolves into statements of grandeur and nothingness.
The production team of Colin Richardson and Scott Burns helps give this a burly full sound that rivals the famous HM-2 abuse over in Sweden, and like many great metal albums, this one seems to capture a moment in time where people came together with synergies that produced greatness and then disippated into the aether.
Tags: death metal, massacre
I haven’t heard this but I’m about to have
The oversaturated pink colors on the artwork here actually work strangely well to present an alternative, fucked up version of evil (as the HIV viruses are cumming inside you). Spin this one on pride months, and don’t forget to find a good remaster on p2p programs, it’s there.
Also on Amazon in FDR for twelve bucks
I hope HIV cums inside you for putting that image out there you subhuman [melanistic] fuck.
Ya this one fucking rules
One of the best meat and potatoes death metal albums. The cover artwork clearly depicts gremlins (i.e., HIV virions) traversing Chuck Schuldiner’s anal tract.
very few things are actually LOL but this is
Gremlins 2 had Slayer playing in the background in this scene, like Ace Ventura pet detective had Cannibal Corpse. I like both movies. (I know that Suffocation is better than CC btw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u49yh5h1tIw
Brett, what are your thoughts on the first Atrocity full length? I recently revisited it and found it to be better than I remembered.
Does anybody know if the Season of Mist Ildjarn reissues are remastered?
Excellent album. The EP that follows isn’t so great except the track “Provoked Accurser” which was recorded at the same session as the full-length (so more of the good stuff basically). If you rip your albums to MP3 then it works well to include that one on as a final bonus track.
I recalled something of this nature. Wonder if they could fit it in between tracks four and five.
I give the album 8.5 bug chasers out of 10. But still, anyone that hasn’t From Beyond yet is a total n00b.
In the same vein I think Malevolent Creation – Ten Commandments needs more love too, that record is badass as fukk!
MULTIPLE STAB WOUNDS
This album hasn’t aged well. Those Death musicians simply weren’t very good writers.
It aged bad out of the gate tbh. It sounds like Pantera drying to make Vulgar Display of Power death metal
Pantera sounds like a special education class trying to use toilets in a European-made airplane.
Oh totally man. It’s primitive and idiotic like some kind of bovine, like an angry livestock, like a… bull. Hunh. I guess I never thought of it that way. It’s like Phil Anselmo but twice as big fucking my wife while I’m in the chair and then feeding me creampies as I strain against my cock cage.
Brett might as well do a positive review on a similar work, which is Baphomet – Dead shall Inherit. Not an ‘ultra-classic’ like Dismember or Incantation, but still good enough to piss off mid-IQ trolls like you.
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