When it comes to death metal, any type of punk/crust infused version of the genre tends to catch my attention. The filthier and noisier that a band can make it, the more likely I’m immediately going to crank things up and want to run around the room. That’s exactly what Indonesia’s Masakre has gone for on their third EP Morbid Extinction, which finds them offering up short blasts of pure chaos where raging D-beat and walls of distortion drive everything forward. While most of my exposure to Indonesian metal has been of the brutal death or black metal variety, Masakre’s already left a mark this early on and is sure to appeal to fans of punk and death metal alike.
My first thought when opener “Abhorrent Dreams” came on was that I was listening to a death metal version of Napalm Raid. You’re immediately greeted with a dense wall of distortion and roaring instrumentation that brings in old-school American and Swedish death metal with a healthy dose of D-beat and crust punk. The songs skew towards the shorter side, and while there’s plenty of D-beat and blasting Masakre does occasionally slow things down to allow some grimier atmosphere to spread across the recording. With five tracks that run a little over eleven minutes, Morbid Extinction is over quickly but it hits as hard as possible in that span of time and has the type of all-out aggression that makes you want to hit repeat once its over. Stylistically I’m reminded of Autopsy and Nihilist from the death metal side and everything from Doom and Anti Cimex to Discharge on the crust side, with some songs tending to lean more towards one side than the other. But what’s continue to drawn me to Masakre is that they aren’t just a death metal band with a little D-beat or crust that lets some lurching death metal riffing seep in, but fully encompass both genres at specific points. There is room for them to branch out a bit more and find even more of a unique identity, and I almost feel like a dip into death/doom for a song could work in the future. But the in your face and noisy yet balanced production goes a long way and makes Morbid Extinction feel truly scorching. If you get the CD version, 2018’s Crawling to Perdition is included (minus the cover of Mayhem’s “Deathcrush”) and while the production and songwriting aren’t quite as strong it still manages to fit well and shows how the band has progressed over the years.
The vocals are where the Napalm Raid comparison once again came up, as Masakre’s singer has a growl/bark that’s drenched in so much reverb that it feels like it could grind you into pieces. Admittedly this is the type of pitch that doesn’t click with every listener and can come off as a bit one-dimensional on longer releases but given the eleven-minute length that doesn’t end up being an issue here. It’s also safe to say that if you are a fan of any the bands mentioned in the last paragraph that you should find the hellish growls to work well with what Morbid Extinction has to offer. What’s interesting to find is that the dense reverb seems to be a more recent addition, as the bonus tracks from Crawling to Perdition are more direct and showcase the vocalist’s natural pitch a bit more. I think the changes work to Masakre’s advantage, as it makes every aspect of the band’s material sound immense and destructive.
There remains room for this band to further expand upon this template and fully make it their own, but the fact that they’re already blurring the lines so easily between death metal and crust helps a lot. Their sound is even more destructive and every moment feels like it could break your bones, which will keep me coming back for a while. The inclusion of the bonus material also shows just how far they’ve come in a short period of time, and this is going to be a band worth keeping track of to see where they take things on an album or another EP. Morbid Extinction is available from Pulverised Records.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
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