Band:	Massacre
Album:	Promise
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	July 23, 1996
Guest review by:	Rikke

01. Nothing
02. Forever Torn
03. Black Soil Nest
04. Promise
05. Bitter End
06. Bloodletting [Concrete Blonde cover]
07. Unnameable
08. Where Dwells Sadness
09. Suffering
10. Inner Demon

I remember when I listened to Massacre's From Beyond for the first time. It was awesome, the riffs, the vocals, the production, epic. From Beyond will always be one of my favorite DM-albums but sadly I can't say the same for Massacre's second album Promise. Promise is one of those albums which is hated by everyone. No one even tries to say something nice about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend this album, but I want to give my honest opinion of it.

First, I want to mention the musical style of this album; I guess Rick Rozz had heard Death's new progressive sound and wanted to do something similar with Massacre. But instead of progressive elements, he tried to mix Massacre's death metal sound with groove and doom metal with disastrous results. This album proves that Rick Rozz is not the best songwriter in the world and he really needed his fellow bandmembers to save the album.

The whole album is about love, divorce and all in all about everything, which has nothing to do with death metal. The lyrics are a huge drawback because they are so lame and irritating. Clean vocals are very monotonous and they add nothing good and most of the time they just get in the way ("Forever torn" being an exception) and make people pull their hair out.

Things start decently with the opening track "Nothing". It has a decent groove-oriented riff and the sound of the music is really doomy. Even though the lyrics are horrible (the song is about love, COME ON!), the song is listenable and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed it.

Even though the songs are quite repetitive and predictable, some songs are actually listenable (to a point I might actually call them good) like the previously mentioned opening track as well as "Black Soil Nest" and "Bitter End". I actually enjoyed these songs, but they are nothing compared to From Beyond's songs. For the most part the songs drag on too long but they do have interesting parts in them like in "Unnameable" and "Nothing's" solo and the title-track's riff, but the Concrete Blond cover is a joke.

I really can't recommend this album to anyone due the lame lyrics, forced sounding riffs and lame clean vocals. Like I said, some songs are actually listenable, even good. Even though I find myself listening those particular songs some times, they don't save the album. I give some credit for trying something new, but sometimes things just don't work out as planned.