Massacre

Killing Time by Massacre—the trio comprised of Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, and Fred Maher—is a molten collision of avant-punk velocity and improvisational deconstruction. With Frith's wiry guitar, Laswell's brutal bass, and Maher's manic percussion, every track lunges between catastrophe and comic relief.​
In the lexicon of experimental rock, Killing Time by Massacre - formed by Fred Frith (guitar and electronics), Bill Laswell (bass and cornet), and Fred Maher (drums and percussion) - is both a warning sign and a cipher, a feverish dispatch from 1981’s downtown New York where the boundaries between punk, jazz, and raw sonic ritual blur to delirium. Frith’s approach as a guitarist is profoundly nonconformist: rather than indulge in pyrotechnics, he conjures everything from wiry jazz chords to white-noise screams, threading his lines with melodic shards and digital sputter. Bill Laswell, a pillar of left-field bass, brings loping, elastic grooves and brass accents; Fred Maher’s drumming is frenetic and terse, pushing tension and release through manic interjections. Their collective energy comes from a refusal to anchor—these players are in perpetual motion, vibrating between danger and irreverence.​

The album’s tracks like “Legs,” “Aging With Dignity,” and “Corridor/Lost Causes/Not the Person We Knew” never settle. Massacre fuse math-rock precision and Beefheartian fragmentation, pivoting from downtown funk to improvisatory chaos. Most striking is the trio’s conversational dynamic—every live-take imperfection and ecstatic gesture is left candidly on display. Whether erupting into spasmodic punk or wandering through geeky technical passages, Frith, Laswell, and Maher execute each piece with the conviction that rock conventions are best treated as raw material rather than fixed rule. Killing Time is music that repels routine and embraces revelation, relentless in its intensity and unexpectedly cathartic in its humor.​

Rather than simply synthesizing genres, Massacre obliterates boundaries—evoking influences from Derek Bailey to Captain Beefheart, Funkadelic to The Shadows. The remastered edition clarifies both the album’s fidelity and its playfully confrontational intent: Massacre set out not to merge traditions, but to break them open. In the restless aftermath of punk and before the resurgence of free improvisation, Killing Time stands urgent, offbeat, and permanently unclassifiable. For listeners, it remains a power trio’s audacious declaration—three full names, one uncompromising sound, and a reminder that time is best wrecked in the act of creation.