Hailing from Hamburg, Germany, blistering two-piece Mantar have distilled a shocking amount of punishment into their debut release Death By Burning. Taking the raw ore of filthy punk and blackened doom, this record is acerbic and blistering, with all the hateful, swollen emotion of sludge but none of the weight.
It's easy to locate their sound as somewhere between the Melvins and Darkthrone; in its more aggressive and gritty moments, Death by Burning also evokes Cursed and Scott Angelecos' (Bloodlet) most recent project, Junior Bruce. The murk and distortion in their sound is almost an instrument in its own right, in some places slathered on like engine grease, elsewhere smoking and molten, bare cinders. There's an urgency and threat that builds over the course of the record, from the throbbing malevolence of "Astra Kannibal" to the thrashing misery of "The Huntsman." Death By Burning is supposed to hurt; it does, and beautifully, with a bright, incandescent agony.
(Svart)It's easy to locate their sound as somewhere between the Melvins and Darkthrone; in its more aggressive and gritty moments, Death by Burning also evokes Cursed and Scott Angelecos' (Bloodlet) most recent project, Junior Bruce. The murk and distortion in their sound is almost an instrument in its own right, in some places slathered on like engine grease, elsewhere smoking and molten, bare cinders. There's an urgency and threat that builds over the course of the record, from the throbbing malevolence of "Astra Kannibal" to the thrashing misery of "The Huntsman." Death By Burning is supposed to hurt; it does, and beautifully, with a bright, incandescent agony.