Sunday, December 28, 2014

Mahtowa Death March - Mansorrow



The Mahtowa Death March is apparently a violent, hostile swagger which abrades everything in its way. This music has the strung-out, menacing hostility of Eyehategod - it oozes vitriol from every hole, natural and self-inflicted. This is so dirty and raw that it makes crusties feel like they need a shower after listening to it. 

Raw-as-fuck metalpunk full of vitriol and hostility, that's what this is. 

Mansorrow has an incredibly abrasive texture that comes from uncompressed, sharp guitars and distorted vocals, all through a jagged aura of tape fuzz. The texture is a bit reminiscent of the distorted guitar noise of Nine Inch Nails' "Broken" though the music is not - aside from the sung vocals fading out in "Birds Ate My Face." The music is upbeat and contrasts some minor differences in tempo effectively, Metallized, southern-tinged rock and roll riffs mingle with crusty speed metal in an unidentifiable storm of rage. The Americana tinge to both some riffs and solos helps pronounce an identity amidst the amalgamation of punkish rock and roll, dirty crust, and nasty heavy metal. I can't pin it down among existing styles well, but it is certainly distinct. It attacks like Eyehategod's punk side, has the harshness and bite of blackened metal, the intentionally dirty sound of recent crust punk, and the rip-forward mentality of the most vicious, sociopathic Japanese metalpunk. The delivery is so aurally aggravating that a simple drums/guitars/vocals setup earned a few comments about this being noise. 

Take 13 minutes and listen to it, then let me know what you think, because there's certainly more to say about it than I've said. This seems to be pretty unique, unusual, and well-executed. You just need to know about it. 

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