Like a wake-up slap in our faces, Mastiff´s new release is upon us. It is right in the turbulent wake of their previous release, Deprecipice that we also reviewed. Not a lot has changed but where shall a band go that is as masterfully bleak as Mastiff? Glad they’re there.

This is music mirroring a world gone askew, music that will keep you sane in the madness. As the EP opens with bludgeoning drums, a distorted sampled voice, high-pitched guitar effects can be heard before the dense and distorted riffs begin to search for a chord to start with. Then it fuses into the well-known frenzied and furious sonics of Mastiff, with the ever-present heaving and throbbing bass that lays the foundation for a rhythmic fast song led by relentless drumming. All through its ten years existence The band has carved their way into the metal world with their disillusioned sonics and lyrics; ”I’m struggling at life again / Like I’m going under / Based on things no one needs / But everybody wants”. The vocalist spews out these words with hoarse, yet somehow melodic, growls. These vocals, filled with controlled savageness and intensity, have become a kind of a Mastiff trademark, and might be the most powerful on the Sludge Doom scene these days. Mastiff´s whirlwind of sludgey Doom-induced Hardcore is the perfect soundtrack to the raging changes in the world today.

After the opener ”Soliloquy” ends with heavy hammering Sludge Metal, ”Rotting Blossoms” opens with shrieking guitars introducing an extremely fast song where the guitars whirl forward, the drums are pushed hard by the relentless fast low-end bass. The furious vocals emerge in the dense sonics, ramming it onwards. The guitars spread out in discordant harmony forming uncanny sonics before they turn back with riffage and a kind of melodic riffage churning and stomping with dips into discordant soundscape. The vocals are sung as angry as ever with the last lines: “The mass worship / Of disgust and disgrace “.

The intense rage is turned up a notch in the third song, ”Decimated Graves” with lyrics like ”Stealing the land / For profits off arms / Lining your nest / With corpses of kids / No punishment / Too good for you / In the name of your god / That hates you too”. It is not difficult to decode the message here, and the music spews out disgust with raging vocals and shrill guitars, bombarding the ears with thundering rhythm and plummeting bass. There is no reprieve as the drums and bass tighten the music and the guitars are all over the place with fast riffs, introducing some higher pitched tremolos before the music collapses on itself with roaring anger from the hoarse growls. When it picks up speed again everything is heavier, denser and slower. It trudges on with boots of led until it swirls to an end.

The fast and dense ”A Story Behind Every Light” keeps the intensity with blasting drums and a relentless pushing bass. The guitars revolve around the strong hoarse vocals, sometimes in staccato mode, sometimes panning out, and underneath it all there is the extremely fast and heavy bass guitar that tightens the sonics with the bassist´s virtuosity. The song, and the whole EP, for that matter, is a showcase of a band that after a decade has merged their musical creativity one united entity that develops this mightily engaging music. When you get the sense that this is a kind of a longing love song with the lines: ”When time comes I’ll find my way / I miss you every single day / Life’s cruel joke took you away”, you understand the desperate anguish from the vocals even more.

”Corporeal” closes the EP with an irate short song, trudging in heaviness like a steam locomotive, shifting into elongated takes with the ever-present heaving bass and relentless drumming. The rhythm section disappears and only the fuzzy and distorted guitars remain for a moment until it fuses back and swells into what might be the heaviest parts of the record, closing with the lines: ”Horizontal once again / Never moving from this grave / Teaching children to sustain / Life is pointless everyday / Rotting away / Living in decay”.

However bleak and nihilistic Mastiff´s music comes out as, it is always equally vigorous and vibrant. A juggernaut of an EP to push you around a downward spiral in its raw rabidness.