Mantar – Pain Is Forever And This Is The End
Mantar – Pain Is Forever And This Is The End
Metal Blade
Release Date: 15/07/2022
Running Time: 41:00
Review by Rory Bentley
9/10
Back in the early to mid 2000s Satyricon pissed off a huge chunk of Black Metal fans with their latest reinvention. Starting with their “Volcano” album, and more explicitly the follow up “Now Diabolical”, they crafted a Black Metal sound that you could shake your butt to. The melodies were still evil, Satyr’s vocals still snarled like a disgruntled wolverine, and there was still a healthy dose of extremity, but there were big fat hooks and grooves that stomped like AC/DC. It might have put off the die hards who just wanted blast beats and cold Northern bombast, but I loved it. The idea that you can be catchy as all hell while still sounding like pure evil is one that massively appeals to me.
On “Pain is Forever and This is the End”, German Sludgy Extreme duo Mantar remind me of all those good times throwing shapes to the likes of ‘King’ while all the ‘Trve Metal’ miserabalists sneered in their sad little corner. Having bothered to read the press notes for once in a rare moment of professionalism for me, it turns out the band made a concerted effort to focus on writing evil bangers, and evil bangers is what we get in spades here!
The roots of this approach can be found in the band’s excellent 2018 release “The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze” which was certainly not without its nods to good old Rock n’ Roll in between harrowing walls of Sludge and Black Metal. Prominent though these Rock excursions were, they seem like a barely perceptible nod compared to the headlong dive into hip-swinging bangers we get on here.
By the time ‘Grim Reaping’ swaggered through the speakers with a swinging beat and some raw-throated vocal hooks, I knew this was gonna be my shit. In all honestly the opening tracks had already worked their magic on me, with ‘Egoisto’ and ‘Hang `Em Low (So the Rats Can Get `Em)’ bursting with fun like a hybrid of Motörhead and Darkthrone throwing a big satanic knees-up.
Time and time again I got hit with ear worms that I found myself growling along to. ‘Walking Corpse’ turns an eerie intro into a beer swigging riot, with pounding four on the floor drums, as it teases the eventual explosive mantra of “I got no attitude-I’m a walking corpse!”, while ‘Piss Ritual’ is the nihilistic Blackened Power Pop anthem we didn’t know we needed. But despite the intent to strip things down to the bones in the name of catchinesses, things never feel slight or repetitive.
There is a greater tonal variety to the guitars here both in terms of style and the textures employed, which makes this album feel simultaneously more diverse and cohesive. The twanging arpeggios in ‘New Age Pagan’ work beautifully when contrasted with the buzzsaw Extreme riffs that crash in afterwards to give one example. Vocally there is more colour to everything as well, with Hanno Klänhardt channeling that other Black Metal/Rock Star hybrid, Abbath, for the sleazy sung hooks of ‘Horder’. He still won’t be your nan’s favourite singer, but he’s definitely singing for a lot of this.
As things close out with the outstanding ‘Odysseus’ which has an occult, epic feel, like the heavier end of Ghost, I wonder where the time went. The 41 minutes spent in this album’s company absolutely flew by, and despite having a bulging list of albums to review, I found myself playing this one over and over. Although the band have already dipped their toes into this realm of demonic bangers, this album feels like the fully formed evolution of this formula.
In summary this is my feel-good summer album. It might be buried in distortion and delivered with vicious venom, but its core structure is conducive to double fisting beers and cutting a rug with your coven.
‘Odysseus’ Official Video
TRACKLISTING:
01. Egoisto
02. Hang `Em Low (So the Rats Can Get `Em)
03. Grim Reaping
04. Orbital Pus
05. Piss Ritual
06. Of Frost and Decay
07. Walking Corpse
08. New Age Pagan
09. Horder
10. Odysseus
LINE-UP:
Hanno Klänhardt – Guitars & Vocals
Erinc Sakarya – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Rory Bentley and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
