Review by Ben for Massacra - Final Holocaust (1990)

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.