EP REVIEW: For All The Dead Dreams – Mastiff

Following last year’s full length Deprecipice, MASTIFF have come back to claim the spotlight of heavy music with their first release on Church Road Records, which was ultimately deserved as for the past decade or so they’ve shown themselves to be utterly ruthless in and out of the studio. With new EP For All The Dead Dreams, they’ve shown no signs of slowing down. 

Soliloquy starts the EP off to a grim start. Chunky riffs and thunderous drums attack the senses before Jim Hodge’s vocals come in. Distorted and fierce he drills the nihilistic point of the EP into your skull, begging to be buried in a ‘shit filled grave’, you can feel the bile bubbling in his vocal cords. 

Digging deeper into the EP the nightmare beings to unravel as the constant barrage of stone wall riffs from guitarists Phil Johnson and James Lee-Ross ooze like slime across the short but sweet Rotting Blossoms. The guitar work across the tracks is stellar and mind boggling. How they can produce a guitar tone that sounds thick with the riffs buzzing through but also make them nigh on incomprehensible on the same song is a work of beauty. 

As the EP comes to its end – it is only five songs clocking in just shy of 19 minutes after all – A Story Behind Every Light is unbridled rage and a moment of catharsis as Hodge’s vocals are bitter and full of venom as drummer Mike Shepherd’s drumming isn’t as complex as the other songs, but hammers the nail in deep to the open wound that MASTIFF have caused. 

Corporeal is more bile, but with a twang of groove to it, opening with blast beats but getting to a slower hardcore beat your neck hurts just absorbing the punishment. Hodge on this track has his vocals slightly out of time with the band but it creates a more chaotic atmosphere for MASTIFF to play with.

If you’re a newcomer into the catalogue of MASTIFF, chances are the unrelenting force they give off will make you squirm and feel uneasy, but that’s what they do, they charge head-first into making some of the most inhospitable music possible, to tremendous effect.

Rating: 8/10

For All the Dead Dreams is out now via Church Road Records. 

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