Review Summary: While evidently derivative of the Swedish Death Metal scene in general, Bloodred Massacre is satisfyingly heavy enough to still succeed in most accounts.
After a fairly speedy move towards a more melodic, and typically Swedish, style of death metal with their second album,
Impurity, the German band Fleshcrawl didn't waste any time in refining their entertaining, albeit unoriginal style, with two strong follow ups. The latter,
Bloodred Massacre, is a fine example of a death metal album with a strong sense of melody mixed with raw power and aggression; possibly the very basis of the early Swedish Death Metal scene.
Bloodred Massacre is a pretty typical album by death metal standards: good variety of tempos in the guitar riffs, cacophonous drumming, fuzzy bass lines, and fairly well varied songwriting. Certainly this is nothing to set it apart from the many great albums from the early Swedish scene, but that is probably one of it's strengths; there's not really anything to make it worse than the albums that likely inspired it. The songs themselves certainly have few flaws; the most obvious highlight is the extremely groovy
Dark Dimension, which powers along nicely along with a number of faster tracks surrounding it. Really, all the tracks following it work well, too;
Awaiting The End,
Through The Veil Of Dawn, and
Beyond Belief all have distinctions that make them entertaining tracks, and the rest is almost as effective.
Necrophiliac, which seems to be the default Slayer song to cover among death metal bands, makes an appearance here, and it's a good, energetic rendition. The well varied song lengths keep the album from stagnating, and the good mix of melody and aggression leaves the listener wanting little more, except perhaps a more ambitious scope to the songwriting.
While probably nothing new for the experienced death metal listener, Bloodred Massacre offers a lot of great material that should easily appeal to fans of the classic Swedish variety of the genre. Featuring the band's best songwriting of their career, this is probably the album of their's that you should check first.
Recommended Tracks:
Dark Dimension
Bloodred Massacre
Through The Veil of Dawn
