Massacra - Final Holocaust (1990)^{Release ID: 7886}

Having never heard Massacra before, I looked forward to checking this album out. First impressions were not great though, with the album not only having dodgy artwork, but starting off with an extremely inappropriate intro. From this point on, the band push ahead with straight-ahead death metal, with little to no let up. The album has quite a raw, live-like production, but the guitar sound is quite chunky which is suitable enough. The band make mistakes occasionally and never bothered to clean it up, so that should give you an idea of the style of album Final Holocaust is. It's dirty, shameless death metal that takes no prisoners.

I've given this album about four listens now and I can't say it really does a lot for me. Any singular track is decent enough, with plenty of aggression, some nice riffs here and there and typical, yet effective death growls. But as an album, there's just nothing that makes me want to keep coming back for more. Most tracks start to blend into one by about a third of the way through. The dude below that calls this the "best death metal album ever made" is kidding himself. It's mildly average stuff that's certainly worth checking out for anyone that can't get enough of this style, but hardly an essential album.

Massacra's debut marks the point at which the French throw their hat into the death metal ring and try to stand toe-to-toe with the big boys. Final Holocaust epitomises that death/thrash crossover sound that was a hallmark of the late-eighties' transition from brutal thrash to death metal and is an aggressive and relentless blast through ten tracks of vicious and venomous death metal that still maintains a significant proportion of thrash sensibilities, the Teutonic influence of Kreator being particularly apparent I would suggest. There are some cool riffs and solos with energy aplenty to be found within the ten tracks, but unfortunately I don't find that much of the album "sticks" with me. Don't get me wrong, I find Final Holocaust to be a really good blast while it's on, but by the time you get halfway through most of the tracks start to blur one into another and the second it stops I have trouble recalling any of the songs. I really don't want to be too critical because I have heard far worse albums, but this lack of memorability is a significant stumbling block. Would I put it on in preference to Kreator, Slayer, Morbid Angel or Death? No of course I wouldn't, but I wouldn't turn it off and replace it with something else if it was already on either because there is plenty here that I enjoyed. Not every album can be earth-shattering or life-changing, but Massacra do what they do extremely well and deserve some praise for what is a consistent and energetic release. I have been getting more from it the more spins it receives, yet I still struggle to recall many of the tracks later, so maybe it's just me.