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FEATURE: Massacre Records Week
Chances are pretty high that, if you live in North America, you probably never heard of Massacre Records. Honestly, I have, but never really paid much attention to them. Not because I never cared about them, but because their releases were always overseas and not many were released in the United States through Massacre, only under license by if that. One of the biggest names in Metal, King Diamond, has had a home there for a while and, here in the States, we wouldn't know this considering those records are distributed here under Metal Blade Records. But, not too long ago, the label joined up with me to give material for review and make you away of what's going on overseas on their end. Honestly, the more I look into the label and it's current roster, I'm quite surprised by the amount of talented acts that reside on there. However, since this is a North American website, I typically tried to cater to the releases here, and with the plethora of new Metal that came my way this year, some of these recordings went unmarked in the que and sat in the "to be reviewed" folder. Because of this nightmare, I decided it would be time to take a look at what releases the label put out this year I didn't get a chance to review yet. And, with more coming still, now felt like the perfect time to sit down and just grind away with the Massacre.
At the time of writing this article, I have counted at least twelve albums sitting here from mid 2011 to now, including the upcoming Mystic Prophecy album Ravenlord, a release I am personally salivating over to hear from start to finish. My goal is to get as many of these albums reviewed by the end of this week, November 12th, 2011, as humanly possible, and then sum them all up here in this editorial about the label and their releases for that time period. So far I've put a few reviews up of albums the label has issued, which includes the self-titled Furor Gallico reissue, and the latest albums by Hate Squad, StormWarrior, Wizard, and one of my personal favorites: Supreme Pain: Divine Incarnation. You can always just check the review pages and main index to the site, but as time goes on, if you missed an entry to this week, you may not know it was there, so you'll be able to come here and see a list of all the Massacre Records releases covered in this week.
As I'm typing this, I just finished listening to Zombie Inc.'s album A Dreadful Decease, and it's definitely up there with some of my personal favorites for the year so far, along with the other Massacre release Divine Incarnation by Supreme Pain. But, there's still a good deal left to go, and I've been eyeing up the new Criminal album, as well as was impressed by what I heard of Arven already, and simply cannot wait to sink my teeth into Mystic Prophecy as I have already said. I also want to tear into Messenger and Elm Street, as well as see what My Black Light has to offer, as that band seem to be the odd man out on this label considering it's recent line-up of Death Metal, Thrash Metal, and Speed Metal acts.
With Massacre Records Week Over...
I still have a few other Massacre releases to review, but of the nine I did get to review, I have to say it was not quite what I expected. Honestly there were plenty of rather typical albums I got to review. Furor Gallico, Messenger, Wizard, these were some of the bands who had albums in this chunk of reviews that, honestly, weren't the greatest and had their flaws, but were alright. What really stood out to me were Zombie Inc with A Dreadful Decease and Supreme Pain's Divine Incarnation. But, My Black Light was one album that I simply couldn't get into aside the two tracks I mention in the review, and honestly after listening too it once, I really have no interest in listening to it again. Other then that, the eight albums are alright and I had no real problems with them aside StormWarrior with the vocals that had an echo effect that I hope was why it sounded like auto tuning. Hopefully the rest still sitting here are not as bad as that or My Black Light, but overall, Massacre Records does still live up to it's record of putting out some good material worth checking out given the expected few bad releases here and there.
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