### Massive Assault: Slayer

#### 23/05/11 || Habakuk

Here’s a band I’ve loosely followed for a bit of time, playing, as they claim, Old School Death Metal in the vein of Bolt Thrower, Dismember, Entombed and the likes. Sounds true enough to me. And just like Bolt Thrower, from which they seem to have borrowed the war imagery, they don’t seem to change much about their formula. The last thing I heard from these folks was their demo 2005 (I seem to have missed out on “Dystopian Prophecies”), and not much has happened, apart from some improvements in production.

These four Dutchies don’t stray much from the fat Swedish guitar sound meets d-beat meets double bass meets high speed approach, and while I applaud them for their almost trademark guitar tone (it literally sounds like their demo from six years ago) and tight proceedings, my main gripe with this EP is the songwriting. It just lacks the special something, while all the elements are there, theoretically. Even a singer that sounds almost like Nicke Andersson on “Clandestine” can’t help that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these guys can’t write a proper song, in fact this stuff is more than listenable, however if a five song EP evokes nothing but a big “heard before” sentiment, it might be time to clean up your act a bit and get a bit more original. And I say that as a proclaimed lover of the old school.

Obviously, all this can be taken as a a compliment by the most hardcore traditionalists who yearn for nothing but more Entombed, more Entombed, more Entombed, but everyone else will probably kick down a few beers happily to this and ultimately resort to either the originals themselves or something completely different. Judging from the conviction on display, I guess the band fall into the former category, and in this case I honestly congratulate them for fully achieving what they set out to do – but not much more.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Herrie Records
- Website: Massive Assault MySpace
- Band
- Carl-Cristian: vocals
- Fredde Kaddeth: guitars
- Jos Kracht: bass
- Gideon: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Ignore
- 02. Aftermath
- 03. Ghostrides
- 04. Genocide
- 05. Man-Kind!? (live)