Dienstag, 29. Nov 2011, 4:09

Discharge – Massacre Divine

I had not known of this album until I bought it at a swap meet. Before I had a listen to it, I read several reviews of it from various websites and all of them came to the conclusion that it was a terrible album. There are a lot of “true” Discharge fans that will hate this as much as Grave New World or anything that wasn’t Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing, but I didn’t care what they had to say. So, I decided to make up my own and mind and give it a listen. I pulled out that CD and pushed play in my pick-up truck and went for a cruise listening to the whole album.

While the vocals are not the best in the world and it made me kind of wish for some more production or a different style at first listen, I learned to get used to it. Cal’s vocals seemed to fit this record in a weird way. If someone else were to sing it, it would be good but it wouldn’t have given this record that extra bit of that hardcore punk edge. I don’t know if anyone else can feel that, but that’s often what sticks in my head. In a way he was sticking a middle finger to both punk and metal communities in saying if you don’t like it then you can all fuck off. People can talk about the Brain Johnson vocal style all they want; it did not take away anything from this record to me.

The riffs themselves are not groundbreaking or going to change the world, but I find it unique enough to listen to. It seems that over time this record just grew on me and to other people that I shared it with. For a band that started as a hardcore punk band and made a generation of imitators, they are a really great heavy metal band. It’s just a shame that it was lost in the shuffle at that time and not given its proper dues. I love the way the tone of the riffs were and the sound of the bass, I think, is awesome on this album. The two tracks that jump out for me are Challenge Terror and Dying Time. I find myself playing those two songs over and over again. Even White Knuckle Ride and Sexplosion are enjoyable.

This whole album was a kind of Terminator meets Cyber Punk feel, a concept album of sorts. All the songs all have to do with the government taking over and sending in police creating a police state and the people rising up against them. For an album made in 1991 this album still is topical in 2011 and deals with a lot of fears people still have today. I just think this album was a head of its time and that it will get its proper dues in the years to come.
massacre divine