Thursday 29 December 2011

MasseMord - Hatred Towards Mankind and Life Itself


MasseMord - Hatred Towards Mankind and Life Itself (Self released demo CDR 2004)
These guys from MasseMord have been really fuckin’ productive. In the past years they’ve released so many different recordings, under various monikers, that it makes me wonder whether they’ll ever shoot out all their bullets or not. Of course not always the quantity comes together with quality, but with the Let the World Burn crew you can be pretty sure that the quality is there. This band – MasseMord – started with "Another Holocaust Rises” demo, which I already presented in my blog earlier, and here’s the second effort "Hatred Towards Mankind and Life Itself" – released in 2004 in slimcase CDR and a copy of it I’ve got. The demo was also re-released on CD by Death Solution Productions in 2006, but I’ve never seen a copy, so I can’t say whether it looks and sounds the same as the original demo pressing or not.
Musically, if I compare "Hatred Towards Mankind and Life Itself" to the previous demo, "Another Holocaust Rises", I sometimes have a feeling of dealing with two relatively different bands. Within one year between both demos, the band has progressed quite a bit, almost (r)evolved their music and got different personality. For the whole time of listening to "Hatred Towards Mankind and Life Itself" I had a feeling MasseMord have taken a lot of influences from the modern Norwegian black metal wave and choose this over the furious and raw black metal from the previous demo. OK, maybe they don’t incorporate industrial sounds or whatever, but the atmosphere is pretty close…
"Terrorcrusade 2003", which is an opening song, may start with the relatively typical fast black metal slaughter, but quickly this song evolves into something else and new to MasseMord's style, where the riffing is more mechanical and original. I must admit that even before I've noticed that there's cover of Dodheimsgard on the demo, I thought how close MasseMord is sometimes to DHG, but also to Thorns - two of my favourites if we speak about the Norwegian black metal (add to that Satyricon and 1349). Anyway, "Terrorcrusade 2003" is an excellent song, I like its cold atmosphere, catchy (really!) riffing and vocals ("I wish you were dead!") and the bass lines, especially that fragment in the middle of the song. Another songs, like "Aeon ov Gehenna" and "God of Latex Fire" of course follow this kind of playing, I mean if you think of those characteristic riffs and vocals, highly influenced by Dodheimsgard's amazing "Satanic Art" MLP, then a lot of material on this demo is exactly like that, only much rawer and probably less weird (without the schizophrenic pianos, etc), and with some more traditional black metal parts here and there. The mentioned "Aeon ov Gehenna" is just amazing song, I like the riffs a lot, there are some keyboards in the background, what adds a special atmosphere and there's even an acoustic mid part. And don't forget that quite a big part of this song is furiously fast. And "God of Latex Fire" is more balanced between fast riffs and more experimental, slow parts. And what about that cover song I mentioned? Well, Dodheimsgard are kings of experimental black metal and their "Satanic Art" MLP belongs to the best releases EVER - at the same time it's one of the most underestimated ones. It's cool that someone chose a track from it to cover, very good idea, which fits the style of "Hatred Towards Mankind and Life Itself" a lot. And MasseMord did this cover in very good way, didn't change it much, just played it well as hell. It’s great to listen to those memorable lines: "Am I not your super hero!? Am I not your golden chain!?" So, the cover is a good finish of one hell of a good demo.
Final rate: 85 / 100

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