### Mass Obliteration: Fratricide

#### 20/11/09 || Khlysty

Wow! My first demo review for GD! My first, honest-to-goodness, real-life demo, by a death metal band… from Roma, Italy. Now, as you probably know, Italy is a real festering sore when it comes to death metal: from the stone-age of the genre the land of rigatoni al’ arabiata, Inter Milan and “cavaliere” Berlusconi has given (decrepit) birth to a legion of great death metal bands; Suffocazione, Immolazione, Entombere, Cannibale Corpso (man, they was brootal to the core!), Morbido Angelo, Napalmo Deatho, In Flamma, just to name but a few of the bands that, through the years, have come out of Italy’s fertile ground and have given shape to one of metal’s most extreme and virulent genres. So the shoes that Mass Obliteration has to fill are enormous. Now, let’s see, are the boys up to the task?

“Fratricide” is the band’s second demo, coming after 2007 “Abrahamithic Curse”, and its lyric content, as the band states, deals with war and, in particular, civil war. Not that anyone’s gonna understand what the fuck is belched out by the singer(s) during the songs, as the vocals are of the DEEEEEEEP growl-howl type and, thus, totally indecipherable. So, what we’re really left is the music, which is pretty competent death metal. I think that Mass Obliteration takes lots of cues from their American progenitors, delivering a pretty brutal take of death metal, with lots of tempo- and time-signature changes, lots of riffing, some –mostly innocuous- solos and such. If you know your death metal, you’ll be able to draw quite a few comparisons. Me, I’m really not a connoisseur of the genre, so I just review what I hear.

And what I hear is a band that seems to have the chops of going the extra mile and doing great things in the future, if they show the needed discipline, iron out a few kinks that mar the music (maybe I’m wrong, but the drumming sounds a bit sloppy), try to find a more personal “voice” for their compositions and have a bit of luck. On the bright side of things, the band seems to avoid a lot of the ills that’ve been plaguing the genre as of late (useless breakdowns, “crazy” songwriting that goes nowhere and the such), preferring, instead a more “linear” way for their songs to evolve through time.

Bottom line: not bad at all, dear Watson. Let’s see, though, what the future holds for these Italians…

P.S.: did the guys take their name from the Suffocation song of the same title…?

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: –
- Website: www.massobliteration.it
- Band
- Andrea Lisi: vocals, bass
- Giordano Constantino: vocals, guitar
- Mariano Gallo: guitar
- Luca Zamberti: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Mashom
- 02. The remain of hate
- 03. Nekare
- 04. Lathe Biosas