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Massive Assault: Dystopian prophecies
30/07/09 || Lord K Philipson
Who’s better? Massive Attack or Massive Assault? Well, Massive Attack‘s hardly a metal band, but they do create some weird-ass (and at times fantastic) music where emotion and soul is the core. Massive Assault‘s core; play death fucken metal where half of it is borrowed from the Swedish old-school scene (not to mention the guitar sound that is stolen directly from Entombed’s and Dismember’s trademark buzzsaw axes) and the remaining 25% is… eh… also stolen from the Swedish old-school scene from bands like Edge Of Sanity (listen to some of the riffs in the title track and you’ll know what I mean) along with 25% of… would you be surprised if I mention Bolt Thrower and Gorefest?. You could definitely find worse influences for your band…
So who am I to complain?
Well, lemme tell you what puts me off a little (apart from their moniker. It’s not terrible per se, but it’s too close to Massive Attack which means I have typed it wrong a hundred times already in this review. Things like that pisses me off): the lack of absolute classics-to-be material. Where Entombed’s got “Drowned”, “Living dead”, “Left hand path”, “Supposed to rot”, “Blessed be”, “Crawl” or “But life goes on”, where Dismember’s got “Casked garden”, “Dreaming in red”, “Override of the overture”, “Skin her alive” or “Sickening art”, where Grave’s got their whole “Into the grave”, “You’ll never see” and “Soulless” albums – Massive Assault are still trying to catch the right bus down that road. While absolutely competent and at times groovy – they are still short of death metal hits. And hits are fucken le importante.
Massive Ass-ault (sorry, can’t help myself) suffer from the same terrible disease as Dismember by the way; Guitararesis Toohighsis Inthemixis. No matter how fucken awesome that guitar sound is, there’s no need to have it completely in your face whereas the rest of the instruments are forced to stay in the background since they can’t break thru that massive (ehum) guitar assault (ehum again). Also, the drumsound could have needed a little more work. While refreshing to not have a annoyingly triggered sound, those crashes (to name but one thing) sound thin – at best.
“Dystopian prophecies” pummels along with its excellent guitar sound but doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression even if Massive Assault’s death metal is fine by all means. It’s just nothing special, nothing to go apeshit over. It’s a decent-to-good effort that pays homage to the days of old. With Gorefest out of the picture thanx to disbanding (again), Massive Assault should be able to climb up the Dutch death metal ladder, given time. They have the potential when they are at their best. They are just not there yet, as mentioned.
Last off: I dig the cover for some reason. Very “The Da Vinci Code”-esque. When I think about it I’m not sure if that is, in fact, good.
(psst… Now send me one of those cool t-shirts with the skull and yellow logo. XXL, please)
- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Crashlanding Records
- Website: Massive Assault MySpace
- Band
- Jos: vocals
- Fredde: guitars
- Jerome: bass
- Michel: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Forever war
- 02. Come with me
- 03. World destruction
- 04. Weigh up
- 05. Man-kind!?
- 06. O.S.D.M.
- 07. Swallow my venom
- 08. The rival believer
- 09. Dystopian prophecies
