Massacre - From Beyond (1991)

Massacre was originally formed in the early 80's as a power/speed metal band, but in 1984 when Kam Lee and Allen West joined they began taking their first steps towards death metal. Between '86-'90 three demos were recorded with various line-ups and these are very important releases in extreme metal since the '86 demo is said to be the first recording to feature a 'death growl,' of which, Kam being the inventor of this nowadays typical style. In March of '91 the band finally solidified a stable line-up and entered Morrisound Recording studio with Colin Richardson to lay down the tracks that would make up their massive debut full-length, 'From Beyond.'

Its interesting to point out right away that the four members responsible for this recording; Kam Lee, Rick Rozz, Terry Butler and Bill Andrews had all spent their formative years playing alongside Chuck Schuldiner in Death, which means these guys knew what death metal was all about and without question this album delivers the goods.

Guitarist Rick Rozz draws a lot of influence from Slayer with his solos and although none of them are lengthy or overly brilliant its his super charged riffing that will likely grab your attention. I mean his riffing isn't immensely technical or necessarily influential, but these fast rhythms have the tendency to make me bang my head like a freakin' psycho and the thick fuzzed up tone to the guitar makes this brand of heavy metal even heavier. As for Kam, well, what can I say other than I love this guys vocal work. He specializes in one of those low guttural cookie monster-ish roars that erupts from your speakers in commanding fury and his maniacal laughter and high pitched shrieks are intense too. Terry's bass is surely there, though it hardly does much other than follow Rick's guitar (this improved on the following EP, 'Inhuman Condition') and Bill's drumming is not especially technical either, but its your rather dosage of standard thrashy drumming, which works just fine with me.

There's a lot of favs from this album, but, 'Dawn of Eternity' is surely one of the best death metal songs ever with its creepy blood freezing intro and ensuing death metal chaos or the majestic synth intro that greets the listener on, 'Chamber of Ages' is quite similar to something you'd find on early black metal albums. As well the closing cut, 'Corpse Grinder' is a cover of an old Death song, which ends this album perfectly. If you pick up the CD re-issue (I have both that and the original LP) you'll also get the, 'Inhuman Condition' EP from '92, which is largely more of the same, but I can't complain much about that, as well the cover of Venom's, 'Warhead' with Cronos himself singing is a fun little treat.

Unfortunately from '93 onwards line-up problems plagued Massacre once again, but in '96 Kam got a reliable line-up and recorded, 'Promise,' which is often regarded as one of the worst albums ever and after a quick visit to youtube to check it out it sounds like Kam and the boys may very well have been one of the first nu metal bands out there. Yikes...

Massacre folded quickly thereafter but in the past ten years Kam has tried to get Massacre back together as well as formed a few new bands, but nothing has worked out, yet.

Regardless of their later career failures, 'From Beyond' is a certified genre classic and its likely that influences from this album have been drawn on a lot of what followed, but it just is a shame that this is their only worthy offering.