In the past year, the Canadian rock group Angine de Poitrine has been taking the internet by storm. They play a cool type of stripped-down math / progressive rock with quirky melodies and tricky time signatures that have elements of funk rock.
While I like the group a lot, there are plenty of people that like to claim that they have a wholly original sound. But to my ears, they have a huge debt to bands that were part of the experimental rock scene in New York City in the early 1980s: Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen and another group called Massacre. My typical inclination would be to focus on League of Gentlemen (due to my affinity for Fripp and King Crimson), but I’m going to throw a curve ball and instead focus on Massacre.
Massacre was a band formed by bassist Bill Laswell, drummer Fred Maher and guitarist Fred Frith in 1980, Laswell and Maher were already playing together in Material at that point and Frith joined after his previous band, Henry Cow, broke up and he moved to NYC from England.
Massacre was early in Laswell’s and Maher’s careers. This was before Laswell collaborated with Herbie Hancock on “Rockit” and before Maher played with Lou Reed and Matthew Sweet. They were all young and hungry.
The original lineup of Massacre was short lived. They basically broke up by mid-1981 after only playing a handful of shows and releasing one record, Killing Time, which is today’s pick!
Killing Time is actually a mixture of studio and live recordings recorded on two separate occasions. The live songs were from concerts they performed in Paris in April 1981 and the studio material was sessions in Brooklyn in June 1981.
The album starts off with “Legs” setting the tone and modus operandi. Frith’s chiming guitars and Laswell’s slippery bass propel things forward while Maher plays with the concept of time with his funky beats.
“Aging with Dignity” follows with a more pounding and syncopated patterns and shifts between quick and slow parts in a very whiplash fashion. There is also some yelping vocals to add to the mayhem.
“Bones” is another highlight from the studio sessions. It sounds like a surf rock band that slipped on the sand and got caught up in the riptide never to be heard from again.
The title track of Killing Time is perhaps the song that reminds me the most of Angine de Poitrine. Internet trendsetters, take note!
The live recordings are more improvisational, but still retain the same overall style. “Subway Hearts” might be the one that keeps closest to what they were doing in the studio, but with a little more danger…it sounds like they could lose control of the ship at any moment but somehow hold it together. Some of Frith’s guitar parts also reminds me a lot of what Zoot Horn Rollo was doing with Captain Beefheart, so that’s a plus in my book!
“Not The Person We Knew” is another live song that slows things down but keeps the tension high. It has an almost punk reggae beat that Stewart Copeland and The Police would later popularize.
Bill Laswell would also play pocket trumpet on some of the live songs, such as on “Surfing” which adds an additional demented element to the proceedings.
The live songs would sometimes allow the band to stretch out more too. “After”, clocking in at five minutes, is practically an epic for them. I love Laswell’s bass playing here as it signaled where he would go later with his bands Material and Praxis.
Killing Time closes with “Gate”, another studio recording. It serves as a nice bookend to “Legs”.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of live footage out there of the original trio, but I did find this tantalizing minute long except of them playing in May of 1981 that is worth watching:
Massacre reformed (in a sense) in 1998, but with a different drummer: Charles Hayward (known for his work in the band This Heat). They put out several albums but they don’t have the same spark or excitement to me as the original trio on Killing Time, which really did capture lightning in a bottle.
