UMUR
"Holocausto de la Morte" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US death metal act Necrophagia. The album was released through Red Stream, Inc. in 1998. Necrophagia are quite the cult act and are often mentioned among the seminal US death metal acts from the 80s. They were formed in 1983 and released several demo tapes before recording the "Ready For Death" album, which ended up shelved (released in 1990). Necrophagia instead released "Season of the Dead (1987)" as their debut album. They disbanded shortly after the release of the album though and were inactive until 1998, when Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo contacted lead vocalist Killjoy, with some ideas for songs. Killjoy decided to start Necrophagia again with himself on vocals, Dustin Havnen on bass, Wayne Fabra on drums, and Phil Anselmo on guitar (here working under the Anton Crowley pseudonym). The latter has written the material featured on the album.
The music on the album is a horror/gore themed old school sounding death metal style with doom, thrash, and grindcore leanings. The latter in small doses, but there are a few times during the album´s playing time, when the band blast away in noisy cacophony. The tempo is predominantly mid- to slow paced though. The material on the 8 track, 39:45 minutes long album are generally very simple and this is predominantly rather primitive old school US death metal. The instrumental part of the music is often almost too simple which means my attention wanders, but the horror movie samples and Killjoy´s relatively varied growling/screaming vocals do save some of the day.
So "Holocausto de la Morte" is not a particularly well written nor a very original sounding release. The raw sounding production, and the decent delivery of the music are on the plus side of things though, and upon conclusion it´s a decent release while it plays, but just as soon forgotten when it´s over. A 3 star (60%) rating isn´t all wrong.