Five years after ruining their career with 1986's glam-metal fiasco, Grave New World (a stylistic sellout so reviled that fans started trying to beat up the band on-stage!),
Discharge finally found the strength to reunite and attempt a comeback with 1991's
Massacre Divine. Unfortunately, the album's only lasting claim to fame was not sucking quite as hard as its incomparably crappy predecessor. Heavy metal -- not hardcore, and certainly not punk -- was still the predominant influence behind token album tracks such as "City of Fear" and "Lost Tribe Rising," and even though he'd wisely abandoned his intolerably substandard
Robert Plant whine, vocalist Cal's new
Brian Johnson-styled rasp hardly made for much of an improvement. Nevertheless, improvement it was, and, luckily for
Discharge, their legacy was now such, that numerous major metal stars were singing their praises and giving them cause to stay together (1992 would see the release of an all-star tribute album titled Discharged -- one of the first of its kind). That being said, original fans of
Discharge's definitive early years will still want to give
Massacre Divine a very wide berth. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia