Musical rules are made to be broken, genres and titles made to be kicked out of the window. Most bands can’t do it properly and never actually manage to skip past their own restrictions. Then again, those that do either sound like shit because they just threw themselves into an experiment, or that they sound so good that previous material pale in comparison.
Such is the work of Mantar, the Hamburg-based extreme Metal duo. And they even manage it without a bass player.
Having no less than four other full lengths under the belt, with 2022’s “Pain Is Forever and This Is the End” even winning winning all kinds of titles (including hitting #2 in Germany’s top 10 album chart), the band is no stranger to crowds who look for this primordial, hard-hitting kind of sound. The aforementioned album has seen a small shift in both sound and in production, making it a whole lot more polished than the band’s previous grimy tunes, and so although it was met with a good deal of success, it also received some mixed opinions by long standing fans of the band.
I can start by saying that the band’s new effort, “Post Apocalyptic Depression”, is pretty much the opposite of that album in the sense that it’s a much more raw, more straightforward, dirtier and makes a correlated effort to return to the band’s roots; well, almost.
Get your Ibuprofen ready, because even opener “Absolute Ghost” would break your neck to pieces with some absolutely mad rhythms, like a ruthless beast that won’t let go, easily setting the tone for the rest of the album, before continuing to the groovy-as-fuck “Rex Perverso”, boosted by Hanno’s aggressive and somewhat even memorable vocals.
A powerful trait of the German duo is making songs sound much fuller than what they are. You might think there’s bass somewhere in the vile sound on “Halsgericht” or “Pit of Guilt” but nope, think again. It’s just a bunch of thick guitar tones along hard pounding drums, yet it carries a dirty weight that some bands never manage to get to.
It’s like your belly after pizza night. Heavy and hard to ignore.
Meaty guitar work leads the way into “Church of Suck”, and together with Erinc’s hard hitting hands, the duo creates that well-loved Sludge/Punk/Metal/Whatever-else mixture that defines the band all these years. That said, the duo has never been boxed into anything specific and exactly because of that, they managed to remain interesting all these years. This time, it’s also covered with a layer of dirtier production than before, giving the album a certain component that wasn’t there in the band’s previous full-length.
There’s no doubt that Mantar grew as musicians and that they enjoy venturing into new territories, but their new album proves that their roots run deep, at the same time.
Label: Metal Blade Records
Release Date: February 2025
8/10
Tracklist:
- Absolute Ghost
- Rex Perverso
- Principle of Command
- Dogma Down
- Morbid Vocation
- Halsgericht
- Pit of Guilt
- Church of Suck
- Two Choices of Eternity
- Face of Torture
- Axe Death Scenario
- Cosmic Abortion
