UMUR "The Second Coming" is the third studio demo release by US, Florida based death metal act Massacre. The demo was independently released in November 1990. Massacre were originally active from 1985-1987, but folded when three out of four members left to join Death, leaving lead vocalist Kam Lee on his own. Lee was however contacted by Earache Records boss Digby Pearson after he had listened to the early Massacre demos and as guitarist Rick Rozz had been recently fired from Death, the two of them opted to ressurect Massacre and hired bassist Butch Gonzalez and drummer Joe Cangelosi. The latter fresh out of a stint with Whiplash. Pearson almost immediately offered Massacre a recording contract and the band soon began to compose new material and send it to Pearson (six tracks and a total playing time of 33:03 minutes). However Pearson showed no interest in releasing the material featured on "The Second Coming", and after Lee and Rozz reunited with bassist Terry Butler and drummer Bill Andrews (both had recently departed from Death), the quartet recorded material which was primarly written in 1985-1987 and included it on their debut full-length studio album "From Beyond" (July 1991, Earache Records).

So the material featured on "The Second Coming" is a bit interesting, as it was Massacre´s attempt to write new original material, but as they were turned down by Earache Records, they had to shelve the material and work on recording old material instead. So why wasn´t the material on "The Second Coming" worth releasing? Well...for starters it´s pretty thrash metal oriented and only partially death metal oriented. Kam Lee doesn´t sound as brutal as he once did and would again only a year down the line, and the music is simply too advanced. What the people (and Earache Records) wanted at that time was something simple, brutal, and effective. "The Second Coming" features relatively complex drum work, pretty technical bass playing (I hear some pretty intrusive and unfitting slap bass a couple of times), shouting thrashy vocals, and some pretty unremarkable riffs. So while this is packed in a relatively well sounding production considering that it´s a demo, it´s overall not that interesting as a death metal demo, which was what Earache Records was expecting from Massacre. So how history went down is actually perfectly understandable in retrospect, but it must have been a real blow for Massacre when they were confronted with reality (your new music sucks, we only want to release the material you wrote several years ago). A 2 - 2.5 star (45%) rating is warranted.