Avant rock in the early 1980s was a very different beast than in the preceeding decade. After punk and new wave, DIY experimentation, electronic music, and a healthy cross-breeding of scenes via all manner of unlikely collaborations and manifestos-- playing six degrees of separation with musicians from the late-70s and early-80s could easily make bedfellows of a pop star and a no wave anti-celebrity-- bands who might've been content to play just prog or free improvisation or deranged blues began throwing everything into a blender and skronking out whatever they could. Predating today's noise-rock scene-- and earlier acts like Boredoms, Ruins and John Zorn's Naked City-- the first wave of 80s experimental rock musicians had few precedents for their brand of noise, but they did have the ability to choose amongst a huge variety of source material to integrate into their cacophonous attack plans. Heads of the class were This Heat, Material, the Work, Ornette Coleman's Prime Time, James Blood Ulmer, Last Exit, and the international trio Massacre.
Massacre formed in New York City in 1980, after British guitarist Fred Frith had moved there following the demise of his former band, Henry Cow. After hooking up with Material bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Fred Maher, the band recorded a single record in 1981 before disbanding. And they totally killed it: The tunes on Killing Time represent one of the greatest possible ends for the concept of a power trio circa early-80s downtown NYC. Taking hints from no wave, Massacre's music had a generally chaotic, breakneck pace, focusing each member's considerable musical abilities on jagged, squealing "melodies" and an angular yet blurred attack. Some of the music sounds improvised (reminiscent of earlier Henry Cow live stuff, or even mid-70s King Crimson), but the pulse never wavers; momentum never falls below a menacing rumble.
"Legs" is a hybrid of early Devo and Discipline-era Crimson, with atonal guitar lines, pointed phrasing and that unmistakable proto-dancepunk pogo beat. Laswell's rubber band punch underneath the head makes an already feverish tune seem all the more ready to burst, and when "Aging With Dignity Takes Over", the trio dives headfirst into apocalypse-beat. Frith sounds like Derek Bailey gone punk, and the primal drums and Laswell's strings being abused are certainly in keeping with the aggressive, primitivist aesthetic. Perhaps that's the strangest thing about Massacre: They sounded as immediate and unsettled as a no wave act, but played everything like rabid musos.
The title track blows everything out of the water, again hitting the hi-speed beats and ultra-dissonant guitar leads, sounding like submarine chase music-- paranoid and destroying anything in its path. ReR's reissue adds several live bonus tracks, including dark ambient pieces like "You Said", "Carrying", and "Know" that predate Frith's Death Ambient project of the 1990s. Conversely, "F.B.I." is something of a metal cowboy song, and reminds me of tracks on the first Naked City record where the band would start out playing a fake television theme only to erupt in splatter noise at seemingly random intervals.
Suffice to say, Massacre are not for the faint (or musically conservative) at heart. After a long layoff, the band did regroup in the late-90s, though working with ex-This Heat drummer Charles Hayward instead of Mayer. The results were interesting, but to my ears, they never matched the focused intensity of Killing Time. Nevertheless, this record belongs in a pretty select group of great, instrumental avant-rock albums, and is one that should find a fan in anyone who doesn't mind a few shards of broken glass mixed in amongst their riffs.
