Long Running Florida death metal act, Massacre, seems to always have something going on.  Whether it’s the issues with the internet trolls or former members going on to form Inhuman Condition several years ago, rest assured, vocalist Kam Lee is sure to always comment.  I met him a few years back at MDF and he was nice enough to take a picture with me and he’s a pretty cool dude.  We both have an affinity for all things related to Godzilla and Horror movies.

No one can deny the impact of the legendary 1991 debut album From Beyond and the follow-up ep, Inhuman Condition and what those releases still mean to the death metal community.  After various hiatuses and such I will say I really did not like any of their other releases until their Resurgence album, in 2021.  It was the perfect name for the album and armed with Nuclear Blast Records for support that album is pretty much in constant rotation for me.  I felt the return of the true Massacre and the songs kick major ass.

The EP’s that have followed since – Mythos, Corpus Umbra and Tri-pocalypse have all been fun to listen to.  The band got more involved with merging horror movies into the music with songs giving homage to The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness, and covering classic bands such as Repulsion.  All fun, with ass-kicking artwork adorning the releases.

Necrolution is the band’s fifth album and has lots of tracks.  16 in total, however, there are a plethora of prologues leading into the horror-infused songs.  It’s a lot. The band is also on a new album with the excellent Agonia Records. “Fear of the Unknown” opens the album and classically gallops along nicely.  It’s a pretty fast song and very old-school.  Kam’s vocals sound great and the music has the sound of the last album.  It’s a short song and I enjoy Kam’s growl to end the song.

“Ritual of the Abyss” takes some moments from what is considered quite a big mulligan in the band’s releases, the 1996 groove-laden album Promise.  I have never met anyone who liked that album.  Regardless, the song has some groove and chanting in the beginning and the sound is similar to stuff on Promise.  Luckily the band wipes the taste out of our mouths and gets into their signature death thrashing selves.  There is a cool guitar solo smack dab in the middle of the song.  The slower parts are pretty well done.

“Death May Die” is quite the tongue-and-cheek title and has excellent double bass drums.  It’s great to see Sweden’s Rogga Johansson return on guitar with this album and adding fellow Swede Jonny Petterson on guitars also smart.  Both of these fellas are quality players and also in a million bands.  Uk’s Jon Rudin is on drums and the only other U.S. member, aside from Kam, Mike Borders returns on bass guitar.  So Massacre is essentially a global death metal band with a 90’s Floridian sound.  Anyway this is another short song at two minute this gallops along nicely with some killer drum rolls.  There is quite a bit of atmospheric elements when certain guitar harmonies come in..I’m still on the fence about how I feel about them.

“Shriek of the Castle Freak” opens with a classic Kam higher raspy growl shriek and then the song gallops along.  Pretty standard fair, a bit on the vanilla side.  I enjoy the catchy galloping and some classic metal guitar solos on this song, with some pinch harmonic action happening.

Necrolution is a good album from Massacre.  It’s not up there with the last one, I truly love that album.  But outside of the classic debut, this smokes their other full-length albums.  This is standard classic-sounding 90’s American death metal, but without some of the edge of their last album or debut.  Some of the moments are a bit vanilla, but the production is well done for this style of death metal.  The album cover is ghastly and amazing, like their past several covers.   All in all as Larry David would say, this is “Pretty, pretty, pretty good”.

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