Massacra - Enjoy the Violence
Review: Frenetic and urgent in its whirling collision of speeding objects synchronized to a tremelo strum just under the pace of a hummingbird, this music moves fluidly through phrases joined by abrupt reconfigurations of structure to form an inner narrative of changing shape motion reflecting the aesthetic and emotion of each phase of the developing piece. Foundational in their influence on both rippingly fast death metal and the rising black metal genre, Massacra were among the first metal bands to give rise to classically-influenced structure in nihilistic music.
Feral vocals slash across pounding rhythm carrying direct motifs of revolving riffs which in inversion or recombination transfer the listener through Wagnerian visual illustration in sound: shaping harmonic space in collage of juxtapositions to demonstrate change, allowing basic poetic ideas to expand into song structure conveying not catharsis but logical realization within a context where catharsis is an event of listener decision. Cadenced to the motion of human beings in times of war or great need, the rhythms carrying melodic progression in the shifting layers of riffage that compose these hymns of violence are distinct in hook and architecture, and open a world of possible lexicon in texture and shape that has yet to be fully explored.
Offbeat and often utilizing internal transitions to project continuity into dynamic shifts in tempo and timbre, with custom technique in strumming and string damping that allows a range of textures to be expressed within the fabric of phrase variation, these songs use an intense whipping strum and tight songwriting to produce an atmosphere of depraved decay and anarchistic self-consumption, in which only the voice of art - and by extension, some form of truth or vision - prevails.
Thematically obscurist but metaphorically diverse in its consultation of lost catacombs of morbid concept expressed in distinctive and innovative riffing, the music on this album is the last work of intensity and energy from these madmen, with later releases opting for a more mainstream style. As the most honed product of the creative process behind this groundbreaking band, the second full length from Massacra expresses the raw freedom and intelligence found in rebellious and apocalyptic music of this level of discipline and intelligence.