Massacre was founded in 1980 in New York City by guitarist Fred Frith, bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Fred Maher as an improvising and experimental rock band. (Frith recently had his band Henry Cow split, Laswell and Maher were both in Material at the time.)

The album is a compilation of recordings made at Martin Bisi's OAO studio in Brooklyn, New York City in June 1981, and live recordings taken from the April 1981 Paris concerts. The '93 CD version contains a few more tracks than the original '81 release, from different live performances.

The band broke up shortly after — although all three continued to collaborate afterwards. Frith and Laswell reformed Massacre in 1998 with drummer Charles Hayward, and released four more albums. However, the '98 ‘Funny Valentine’ is already much mellower in sound, and Laswell was by then in habit of putting dub-ambient on all his records.