Various Artists

Metal Blade has released the thirteenth instalment to the franchise of Metal Massacre. It’s been 11 years since the release of the previous album, Metal Massacre XII. Metal Massacre XIII ranges through many styles of metal ranging from metal that sounds more classical, straight through to The Black Dahlia Murder. Although Metal Blade released the album, not all of the bands and artists are contracted to the label. Some were put on the disc in order to reach a wider audience.

The album is a 19 track disc full of hardcore metal and death metal. Now I know a lot of people are like “Those are NOT hardcore,” well your definition might be different.

Now like I mentioned before, there are some older bands on this album. Six Feet Under for instance. The track Metal Blade threw onto the compilation was “Shadow of the Reaper.” The track is well played, but is too quiet, the volume must have been turned down during the recording process.

Stringing from Six Feet Under is Torture Killer. Now at first, the band was supposed to only be a cover band for old heavy metal, but the band decided to stray away from the covers and started to write their own shit. The album Swarm! was just released not long ago, and that is in fact the track placed on this album.

There is quite a big range of new bands on the album, Torture Killer being one of them. The variety is quite broad, ranging from The Black Dhalia Murder to Fragments of Unbecoming. There were some bands on the album that I had never heard of before, and when I listened to the tracks, I immediately went to BearShare and downloaded some… Gaza and The Ocean for example.

The compilation was well thought out and definitely caught my attention. I’ve listened to it over and over again. Now, it isn’t the best compilation I’ve ever heard, but definitely in my top 7. I’m gonna rate this CD a 6.9/10.  [ END ]

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