(What follows is DGR‘s review of the latest slab of brutality released by the Argentinian band Massacred.)
As if there were ever any chance we weren’t going to cover this one. We don’t have a military-grade spy satellite overlooking the entirety of the world when it comes to heavy metal, but even to those of us who may have bifocals thicker than a California Business Code Of Conduct book, this one wasn’t going to sneak by that easily.
We’ve reviewed some absolutely incredible albums over the course of the year so far and we’re always looking for more. That’s why this one went skating across the desk at the old NCS offices, as we continue our endless sisyphean task of attempting to track down new music for our readers to devour. As if they had a hunger, neverending, and a singular focus on simply obtaining more.
It’s rare that we get to touch base with the solo brutal death and slam scenes these days. The whole genre has seen explosive growth over the past decade as recording implements have democratized and been able to reach wider audiences. It’s resulted in a breed of musician whose desires are different than pure artistic expression, laying somewhere familiar to the grindcore crowd wherein music can be both emotional expulsion and an internet shitpost – the two need not be mutually exclusive.
Argentina’s Massacred is to be appreciated, then, as their aspirations are waved on a banner, worn proudly, and stated so up-front that you could never accuse them of trying to be more than what they are — which is pure and unadulterated Mortician-inspired death metal, one that just happens to have a taste for both horror movies and, surprisingly enough, the Resident Evil series of video games.
Like many of these projects, Massacred have been prolific as well, unleashing a new album, EP, or single every year and often all three of them. The movie sample into caveman riffing formula – or sometimes inverted if we’re feeling spicy – is hardly messed with. Massacred aim to make death metal so brutal and rock-stupid that just about anyone could understand it. They make music meant to appeal to the musically braindead, for whom your average zoo animal is an intellectual challenge, and really, considering the altar upon which they make their offerings, would you want them to do anything else?
Mortal Annihilation is Massacred‘s 2025 release – let loose into the world in late March – and it is just as brilliantly stupid as you could ever want it to be. At twenty tracks and an inchworm’s crawl short of a half hour’s worth of music, Mortal Annihilation is the unrelenting battle-snare blastbeat for which often come to death metal, it’s just that now, with the group’s latest take on their subject matter, we too as the listener can transform into the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the tv meme.
Horror films and media in general have proven to be the most verdant field for this style of music when being harvested for different song lead-ins, and the Resident Evil series certainly has its fair share of cackling goofballs and word-salad monologues delivered in the most sinister of tones. Perfect for leading into a song whose brain activity would get them declared comatose by a practicing physician.
With an album like Mortal Annihilation you could almost throw darts at random songs and have a pretty good time. Massacred are so singularly focused on brutality that every song could tilt the scale in their favor when stacked up against construction equipment on the other side. Mortal Annihilation is an album wherein the song titles themselves are worth their weight in gold. You honestly could not pick a song entitled “Mangled Remains Of Humanity” and act as if you were shocked by what emerged from your speakers. You could pick a random batch of songs and have a decent discussion based on that alone. So, let’s do just that and see where it takes us. We’ll kick our feet up and have a nice cup of coffee as we explore the rotten innards of Massacred‘s latest zombified excursion.
Songs on Mortal Annihilation barely care to cross the two and a half minute mark. Most are in the one to two minute range with a few even clocking well under one minute. If brevity is the soul of wit then perhaps Massacred are the wittiest people in the room, sometimes when a song like “Gore-Soaked Devastation” is like having a truck crash over you, reverse, and then do it again with a feedback soundtrack loop on top of it. At forty seconds it is a song that jumps in, says what it needs to say, and gets right the fuck out of the room.
You’d be forgiven in thinking that it was an intermission in between “Flesh-Eating Pandemic” and its thudding rhythm and “Putrescent Aftermath” and its more traditional firestorm of guitar and drumming. Hell, if you were deranged enough you could treat the whole thing as one full five minute song. You’d be absolutely mad for doing so because there’s absolutely clear distinctions between every single song here, but hey, who would we be to judge?
“Decayed Landscape” is more jagged in its opening bit with a start/stop rhythm whose ideas were slowly seeded throughout the opening assault on Mortal Annihilation. At fifty seconds, it is providing the faster take on the events of a song like “Mortified Existence” beforehand. Detecting something of a bounce in the group’s sound at this point is probably the strangest part but even an act like Massacred likely understand the need to change it up a bit before brutality becomes bore-tality.
“Mutated Horror” is of the small grouping that get to have a game sample layered into its opening bit. Thankfully, Mortal Annihilation is not an album wherein the samples are actually longer than the song. They edge pretty close to an even fifty-fifty split at times, but at a certain point if you’re more movie sample than song, what are you actually saying? Were it to happen here, Capcom’s voice acting team would deserve more songwriting credit than the band would.
“Septic Spawn Of Undead Ruin” is predictably gnarly. Most of the material on Mortal Annihilation plays strictly off of its introductory guitar riff. Monolith-sinking low vocals quickly appear and then the whole song rumbles its way out. The line between surgical songwriting and frighteningly violent is blurred ever thinner here and it may just be tacit admission that brutality on this magnitude and scope works better in much shorter bursts than drawn out into an endless rattle-can apocalypse.
Mortal Annihilation is not an album that will be changing the tides of heavy metal. It is a release that could cause some serious tectonic plate shifting based on its heaviness alone, but this is an album that aspires to be added to blood-soaked pile of gore that is the overall genre as a whole. Massacred want to be a brutal death metal act and accomplish that with ease.
Mortal Annihilation is an album designed for the person out there who describes every other thing as being “sick”, and at times, is well-equipped to meet that descriptor. There’s auditory violence aplenty here, a bombastic amount of blastbeats and grinding guitars that rumble so low even the bass player will be competing for rumble. It’s not something that is overwhelmingly critic-proof, Mortal Annihilation easily recognized for being just as much a “mood” sort of album as an actual musical showpiece. The experience is the brutality. You check in at the door here because you’re waiting for someone to bludgeon you to death with a cinder block.
Massacred‘s year-over-year churn has seen them tackling wider subject matter than just one particular video game series as well, but musically has always kept them firmly planted in the land of low gurgles and even lower rhythms.