MASACRE is a Death Metal outfit that has been active since 1988 and this is their first full-length since 2004's "Total Death".

This album is mastered really well. The drums are snappy, the guitars wail like a newborn baby and the vocals are heavy. The band never let down their energy, the vocals are always top notch, I particularly like the high screams as they have a sense of vulnerability in them which makes it stands out from your typical Death Metal screaming. This aesthetic really shined in "Mutilated", where the voice sounded like someone who was a victim of a very terrible hate crime.

"Bullet" is another standout track. The track title tells you what to expect. War cries, constant hard thumping snare and guitar riffs makes this track sound like a whole war being compressed into a 4 minutes song, keeping only the intensity and fear of the war. I was really surprised how they could make the splash cymbals work but they did with enough reverb and echo making it sound heavier than it usually work.

The band is quite systematic to their songwriting approach. You can almost always expect a guitar solo around the halfway mark. I wish they would play around with that formula and let the listening experience be more surprising, it gets a bit expected after a while. Also, it seems like the drummer has a very strong long for mid tempo military snares rudiments, I just think that could be done better if there is more variety like ghost notes and accents.

This is a band that is very careful with their formula, though it has been working for them for decades, it would be nice to see them working out of their comfortzone and see what interesting music can come out from it!
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