Masakari – The Prophet Feeds (2010)

Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, today we get a very impressive full-length from Masakari, a very powerful Crust/Hardcore band that will surely storm the scene by surprise. Since Southern Lord has started to expand its band roster with ‘different’ bands, they have manage to uncover some very impressive bands in all kinds of different genres.

Masakari, the latest addition to Southern Lord, plays a style of Crust that we can completely identify with and truly enjoy. The band starts off very aggressively with the first track and sets the tone to a very powerful release that relies more on crushing riffing, blistering drumming, and aggressive southing, this album never gets dull or draws like the majority of Crust/Hardcore releases these days.

“The Prophet Feeds” cover a lot of ground in a very short amount of time since Masakari manages to cram 10 tracks on 30 minutes, and let us tell you that no second is wasted on this release. Keeping the D-beat and punk influences in the music, the band manages to sound like nobody else since they have all the ‘roots’ of the genre, but their aural aggression is unparalleled.

The powerful and aggressive riffing is brilliantly complemented by the punk-influenced drumming. The vocals feature the typical raspy/shouted style that most Crust bands shoot for, but they never wonder away to different ranges that the vocalists usually cannot cover. The consistency of the vocals is what keeps this release interesting for us.

Having pretty solid songwriting skills, the band creates songs that are intricate but straight forward at the same time. We are treated to super aggressive almost Black Metal-like passages in songs like “XIV The Voiceless” that give a whole different dimension to the band and keep things fresh. The use of samples (spoken sections) provides a different edge to this band creating an interesting atmosphere to the songs that use them.

In general we usually discard Crust releases after listening to them three times since we fail to connect and have no desire of ever listening to the again. But Masakari’s “The Prophet Feeds” has managed to spark enough interest in their music to find us giving this album more than enough spins and adding it to our stack of CD’s that we play on a daily basis. So if you are a fan of Crust/Hardcore, be sure to get this brilliant release from Southern Lord.

Release: May 2010

Country: USA