MASAKRE (IDN) – Morbid Extinction, 2022 🇬🇧
Formed in 2017 and with three EPs on their discography, no one should doubt that the music made by the Indonesian band MASAKRE isn’t clear and straightforward enough. Beginning with their artwork, including this album’s, all the covers performed throughout the years (HELLHAMMER, first SEPULTURA, MAYHEM…), their name (though bearing little resemblance to its Florida counterpart) to, of course, the sound. MASAKRE is everything we can expect from a southeast Asian death metal band: raw and bestial music, no filters, and a rather dirty production. Pretty much in line with that fertile and productive brutal death metal and grindcore scene.
They label themselves death metal/crust, although they are rather a remnant of the period of those mentioned bands, where the limits between death and black were not defined because such labels did not exist. During the ten minutes and the five brief tracks that Morbid Extinction offers, the band does not leave too much time to breathe, dividing its scarce time between dark and dense mid-tempos and those fast-paced sections which, together with the saturated production and Dirga‘s vocal register, who does not roar, but barks the words, creates an almost cacophonous but certainly devastating wall of noise.
Not only because of the short duration of the EP but, on a first full listen, you might get the feeling that you haven’t really been able to process what you have just heard. This is something we are guessing was already planned, with the downside that we will actually need a few listens to digest properly what the Indonesian band has attempted to do. There aren’t any catchy parts that make us remember what we have witnessed. We, instead, get an overwhelming storm of aggressiveness that’s worth mentioning even if this is something you would obviously expect on a grindcore band. Twenty songs condensed in twenty minutes. What’s important here is the speed and how the songs link with one another.
The thing is that somehow, for someone with death metal roots, it keeps you waiting for that big riff to come and leave your knees twitching. And, it is perhaps that lack of memorable moments that are missing in this release. I do however appreciate that over-the-top aggression, that foul and putrid sound, and the possibility that on a future album they will either go full throttle with the speed or slow it down slightly to concentrate on those dense riffs, that do exist but in very small proportion. I’m sure they can nail either option but do take your pick.
