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Massive Aggression

...And Then There Were None

Written by: PP on 16/10/2011 04:52:36

Reading through the inspirations of Copenhagen-based thrash metallers Massive Aggression is quite interesting. They'll namedrop bands like Hatesphere, The Psyke Project, Machine Head, Opeth, Warbringer, Evile, and other prominent names locally and internationally, but fail to mention the one single band that their debut EP "...And Then There Were None" sounds like the most: Metallica. The whole EP basically sounds like a tribute to Metallica's 80s era from the vocals through the structure of the songs to the shredding.

And for once, that's not a bad thing. Where Battery should've spent a couple more years enhancing their skills before releasing material to the public, Massive Aggression come out with a semi-convincing imitation of James Hetfield's late 80s fury, and a good sense of variation within long songs between fast shredding, slower melody lines, and the 'lead' part of the song. Basically just like how "Master Of Puppets" works if you dissect it into separate parts. "Marching Through The Valley Of Death" and "The Fallen One" both roughly follow the same structure as that song and others by Metallica did by the late 80s. And understanding and executing that part of the songwriting alone makes Massive Aggression sound like what they're doing, so that's thumbs up from here.

But here's the 'semi' bit of the 'convincing'. As of now, the songs sound like Metallica, but more like how their sound was during their demo-sessions. Or more probably prior to the demo sessions. Which is still not bad, of course, but it does leave Massive Aggression sounding like they're still small players even in their local town, let alone the country, and forget about internationally at this point in time. The production is quite bad, which I will inevitably complain about as it is extremely cheap to get a good-sounding recording even with just a single computer and one microphone if you bother to learn the software available for it, but fortunately it's decent enough to maintain the feeling that Massive Aggression have something going on here that could, possibly, develop into something better. It's too early to tell at the moment, though.

Download: Marching Through The Valley of Death
For the fans of: early Metallica
Listen: Myspace

Release date 02.04.2011
Self-Released