I’d not heard of Brooklyn three-piece Mutoid Man before I stumbled across
this, their second, album. It was a random discovery through reading a
blog-post about ‘bands bucking the trend in metal’. I doubt Mutoid
Man care about bucking trends (or even have much of an idea what they are),
but the description’s probably a fair one: this is, no question, its own
thing. I already was deeply in love
with War Moans before I realised that
Mutoid Man’s vocalist, guitarist and
chief song-writer was Stephen Brodsky, formerly of Cave In fame. In the early
2000s, I was something of a Cave In fan,
without ever really adoring them (Antenna
came 9th on this list in 2003, Perfect
Pitch Black just missed out on the top 20 in 2005). Cave In, at least during the period when I listened to them, made quite
light-touch, melodic post-prog. Mutoid Man don’t do that. War
Moans does have its progressive aspects, but it’s a frenetic metal album at
its core. It draws on punk-metal,
hardcore and thrash to create something that’s fast, slippery and weird. ‘Open
Flame’ and ‘Melt Your Mind’ are built on 80s thrash templates, but both twist
away into something else. ‘Date With The
Devil’ is an insidious little beggar, with tom-bashing drums, time changes
galore and some truly stupid lyrics (‘I climbed all over Satan’s daughter,
nothing’s ever made me harder’). Album closer ‘Bandages’ is the only track here
that does evoke Cave In, albeit in a stripped down way, with a flicked guitar line leading
a love ballad of an unusual sort (‘scab in the shape of my face’ being a
lyrical indication), before blossoming into a distorted symphony. An exceptional way to end any record. The stand-out track on War Moans, though, is ‘Kiss Of Death’. For me, it’s the best song released by
anybody in 2017 by such a distance that it’s ridiculous. The spine-juddering verse, with weird little off-shots
and cul-de-sacs, is incredible. But then
it get better, moving into a chorus that’s
to die for (preferably following a kiss). An absolute belter.
Overall, Mutoid
Man have delivered a tiny, tight record that’s full to bursting but never
overflows. About half the songs on show come
crashing in at less than three minutes – leaving your head spinning – and not
one on the record makes it past five. Packed into these little songs, though, are all sorts of ideas, twists
and turns. War Moans is strange and silly, simple and yet sophisticated, seriously
heavy and yet oddly melodic. It sounds
like no other record I own, while drawing from a whole bunch of them. And, crucially, it rocks more than anything
else in 2017.
sample track: Kiss Of Death