Written By Kevin McSweeney
Mastiff For All the Dead Dreams Review
The city of Kingston Upon Hull, or simply Hull, as it’s most commonly known, was designated the UK City of Culture in 2017. East Yorkshire’s hardcore/sludge metal “misery merchants” Mastiff are here to expose the dark underbelly of that culture with the release of their new EP For All The Dead Dreams via Church Road Records and it is dark indeed.
What I like most about these guys is the fact that they really don’t fuck around. They are angry. Oh so angry! (I don’t blame them. If I lived in Hull, I’d be angry too.) In this Mastiff For All the Dead Dreams review There’s seventeen minutes and ten seconds of unrelenting brutality.
There is no intent to surprise the listener or to challenge preconceived ideas about what their remit might entail. There is certainly no concession to commerciality. They just get on with the business of battering your ears, and they do it very well. It’s pure heaviness for the duration, with not so much as a passing nod towards melody.
Clean vocals are clearly for southern softies, so it’s nothing but gutturals throughout from the gravel-throated Jim Hodge. Let’s go through the ferocity track by track, and see if we can escape with our heads still attached to our necks.
Mastiff For All the Dead Dreams Review
Soliloquy
This is like no soliloquy I encountered while studying Shakespeare in school, that’s for sure!
I have no idea what the sample is at the start and I have no means of finding out – what do you think I am, a music journalist? – but it’s eerie and discomfiting, which very much sets the scene for what is to follow, as the pounding beats under wailing feedback resemble a rapid march to the gallows. Lyrically, it’s just as dark, articulating the despondency caused by materialistic desire that blights Western society.
First world problems for sure, but the misery is no less real for that. The riffs are bludgeoning and the breakdown is a nasty brute indeed. The constant variations in pace throughout serve to keep the listeners on their toes – at least when they’re not being knocked flat on their arses. The song draws to a close with the repeated refrain of “Bury me in a shit-filled grave!” (They are from Hull, so it’s possibly an upgrade.)
Rotting Blossoms
What an astonishingly poetic title, given the eviscerating nature of the track! It’s poetry all round, in fact. We had a soliloquy, and now we have rotting blossoms.
Squealing feedback presages fast-paced hardcore punk. The dissonant lead over the savage riff is effectively unsettling. The lyrics are genuinely poetic despite the brutality of the vocal delivery:
I’m left with nothing
But the blame
Substantial losses
In a hate filled game
The refrain of: “Fear lives longer than any love,” is sadly all too easy to agree with in this era of fear manifested as hate and exploited cynically for the sake of political expediency. The mid-paced chug towards the end is extremely conducive to headbanging, especially when the double bass drums kick in, as Hodge laments: “The mass worship of disgust and disgrace.”
It’s been a dark opus so far, and I have a feeling it’s not going to get any lighter, judging by the title of the next song.
Decimated Graves
This is a furious response to the horrific mass slaughter that has occurred in Gaza over the last two years, aiming excoriating censure towards those who have facilitated it and profited from it. For example:
Stealing the land
For profits off arms
Lining your nest
With corpses of kids
Their fury is entirely justified, and it manifests itself in the form of a mid-paced stompalong interspersed with blast beats.
I can’t think of any other examples off the top of my head.) Hodge’s vocals are particularly fierce here. His eyes must have been on the verge of being expelled from their sockets as he roared out his indignant invective, which is perfectly understandable, given the subject matter..
A Story Behind Every Light
The last song wasn’t a comfortable listen, and neither is this.
There’s something about the way the song begins abruptly with an immediate vocal tirade over a staccato riff and rolling double kick drums that reminds me of Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven, especially as there’s some dark lyrical content on that classic album from 1995 too. Having said that, the section just shy of three minutes in reminds me very much of Code Orange, but I lack the technical knowledge of guitar playing to be able to explain why – Like I said, I’m no music journalist! As for the lyrics, well, just take this little couplet for example.
Only way to relive the pain
Just open up my veins
I don’t know if it’s meant to be “relieve the pain”, but either way, it’s a harrowing statement, referencing either hard drug use or self harm, or possibly both.
The mourning the loss of a loved one in the lyrics is reminiscent of Rose of Sharyn by Killswitch Engage, minus the heartfelt melodic vocals of Howard Jones. One might also mention Walk With Me in Hell, the heart-wrenching song by Lamb of God about the loss of a child, though there is no attempt to seek solace in the bleakest of situations here. There is only the bleakness, and the pulverising intensity of the track.
Corporeal
The closing track arrives as a barrage of blast beats alternated with breakdowns. I like the way they’ve closed with the shortest track, and that the intensity seems to have gone up a notch, if such a thing is possible. I particularly appreciate the deployment of chromatic flourishes to the riffing, which adds a flavour of old-school British metalcore to the mix, in the manner of a band like the much-missed Stamping Ground.
Lyrically, they berate the “victim mindset” that leaves the recipient of their ire “…inert, never moving to empower… horizontal once again, never moving from this grave.” there is a blistering breakdown, followed by the repeated chant of “victim mindset!” Then the whole thing is brought to a close in a blaze of screaming feedback.
And that, my friends and fellow metalheads, was a heavy EP and a master class in British metal brutality. Obviously in terms of the music but also the lyrical content.
They say it’s grim up north, and that’s certainly reflected here. It’s described in their promotional material as: “…a fistful of mangled hardcore and sludge riffs and an endless well of spite” yet there’s far more than spite at play there.
The northern sludge metal album is a soul-baring, flesh-burning, ear-splitting cacophony of catharsis and candour that will, if you’ll excuse the terrible and not-exactly-original pun, take the listener to Hull and back.
Metal Lair awards Madstiff For All The Dead Dreams four Devil Horns out of five, and would like to apologise unreservedly for any jibes aimed at Hull and the North of England in general during this article.
They were meant only in jest and were not intended to cause offence. Kevin McSweeney will be forced to spend the rest of the day eating black pudding with ferrets down his trousers as an act of penance.
Order Mastiff’s New Album For All the Dead Dreams Here.
Read more from this author:
Dive into Kevin McSweeney’s latest picks in Seven Deadly Songs, where each week’s heaviest new releases get their moment in the sun (or the abyss).
If you’re craving more deep dives, explore our Deep Cuts series for hidden gems across metal history, or see what the stars (and riffs) have in store in Metalhead Horoscopes.
Track listing:
1. Soliloquy (03:30)
2. Rotting Blossoms (02:52)
3. Decimated Graves (04:25)
4. A Story Behind Every Light (03:38)
5. Corporeal (02:45)
Total: (17:10)
Band members:
Vocals – Jim Hodge
Guitars – Phil Johnson
Guitars – James Lee-Ross
Drums – Mike Shepherd
Bass – Dan Dolby
Upcoming tour dates:
30.08 – Leeds @ Boom w/Escuela Grind
27.09 – Southampton @ Abyssal Fest
04.10 – Cheltenham @ The Frog and Fiddle
10.10 – Derby @ Vic Inn
31.10 – Hull @ Polar Bear
01.11- Leeds @ Northern Monk
w/ Raging Speedhorn
20.11 – Milton Keynes @ The Craufurd Arms
21.11 – Bournemouth @ The Anvil
22.11 – London @ The Black Heart
23.11 – London @ The Black Heart
28.11 – Manchester @ The Star and Garter
29.11 – Edinburgh @ The Mash House
30.11 – Newcastle @ Trillians
FOLLOW MASTIFF ONLINE
