Murder Squad

Unsane, Insane, and Mentally Deranged (Pavement)
by Tim Den

An all-star cast (ex-members of Carnage and Merciless, current members of Dismember and Entombed) bringing you the kind of wide-eyed innocence that the gore metal genre hasn’t seen since its humble beginnings. Murder Squad play Autopsy-style death metal (meaning slow, dirty, almost garage-y, and low-end heavy) with lyrics on subjects long abandoned by the genre’s progression: Piss, surgery, mutilation, etc. And they sound like they believe it too, because – like early gore metal – they were there during that period and know how much magic these primitive characteristics embody. Hype the next black metal band all you want, but there’s nothing as gratifying as a band that sounds like the greats who created this genre in the first place. Murder Squad will remind you how blown away you were when you first heard death metal, and how a song as simple as “Retribution for the Dead” (which Murder Squad cleverly and obscurely sneak in during “Depravation”) made you scream “fuckin’ brutal!”
(PO Box 50550 Phoenix, AZ 80576)