Massive Assault come from Holland, but you wouldn't guess it only by hearing this second demo from the band. This sounds very Swedish low frequency death metal with rocking edge to it. They don't even try to hide their influences, namely Dismember, Grave, Nihilist, Carnage, Entombed, Bolt Thrower and crust punk.

This is music for beer swilling hairy metal maniacs, who have tendency to party a lot. It's brutal alright, but it also exhortates to violent headbanging. 'Man-Kind!?' is a death rock piece, 'Ancient Threat' is more evil sounding slower slab and 'All Turned Black' is a fast death metal song. However, Massive Assault do not sound totally like their influences on any of the own songs, but they manage to mix familiar stuff in their own pieces. On 'Buried', Hypocrisy cover, they sound very much like Hypocrisy, heh. Guitar sounds like a tank engine, with rhythm section providing discharges and generally it's like "the real thing" (go figure that out yourselves). Sounds good for a demo, with raw yet well balanced mix. Vocals are hoarse growl, sounding pretty throat ripping, but not brutally powerful.

If you're into this kind of stuff, go suck this promo for free from the band's website now. There's also an older demo plus a couple of cover songs available. Songs are catchy, well performed and better than some of similar stuff record labels are releasing nowadays, but the extremely low originality factor is the thing, that would make me think twice paying for this kind of stuff.

Reviewed by Lane
09/12/2005 11:43