ALBUM REVIEW: Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth – Mastiff
What does the most miserable, nihilistic band in the world sound like? Well, if you’re Hull’s self-described “miserable band from a miserable town” MASTIFF, it sounds a lot like you. Picking up where previous album Plague left off sonically if not thematically, their third album Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth is a no-holds-barred exercise in extremity, encompassing sludge, death metal, noise and blackened moments to create something ugly, misanthropic and incredibly cathartic.
Whereas Plague examined the evils of social media addiction and usage, Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth doesn’t have a cohesive theme, though still is focused on all the horrible things that humanity does to one another, including perhaps as the title suggests, overconsumption and destruction of the natural world that leaves nothing but ashes for the future generation. If anything, the pandemic has also only enhanced their fury and nihilism; the band have dug deeper into the depths of hatred and despair, emerging only once their task was complete and the most hateful, miserable and misanthropic noise they could muster had been committed to tape.
The Hiss is deeply unsettling, though its ambience also has a disturbing melodicism that burrows its way under the skin as the distorted, half-buried screams add to the fear-inducing atmosphere. Rather than wallowing in the mire, however, MASTIFF instead bring their powerviolence tendencies to bear with the brutal Fail in a short, white-hot blitz of rage. Repulse follows in a grinding groove that sacrifices none of the intensity while still dropping the speed. Latest single Midnight Creeper provides another howling blast of fury, its under two minute runtime delivering vicious sledgehammer blows to the cranium in rapid succession.
At this point it’s blindingly obvious that Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth is a step up from its predecessor in every way; it’s somehow more extreme and vitriolic, even more miserable and full of bile. Yet, despite this, it’s also deceptively complex; the melodic leanings of The Hiss, for instance, are deeply unsettling, but they’re there. There’s flecks of colour elsewhere too, with Beige Sabbath is a vitriolic assault of careening blasts and blunt force trauma riffing, packing a serious amount of variety and hooks into its two minute bludgeoning.
While this is very much the sound of a band expanding their sound and pushing their own boundaries, there’s still moments to be found where they step even further out of their own comfort zone. While Plague mainly dealt in blackened sludge, tracks like Futile demonstrate doomier sensibilities and closer Lung Rust is arguably one of their finest songs. The brutal, low-end groove and glacial tempo are vicious enough but its almost psychedelic leanings push it over the edge into truly spectacularly nihilistic territory, like EYEHATEGOD or DOWN on a particularly nasty trip.
Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth is a harrowing listen; by the end of it you’re left feeling grimy, as if even a bleach bath wouldn’t be enough to remove the encrusted filth it leaves behind. To listen to MASTIFF is to hear the sound of humanity’s worst instincts, to soak them all in and feel truly demolished by them. Plague showed a band with serious promise and a knack for melding blackened sludge, powerviolence and doom; Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth ups the ante in every way, stirring in noise, death metal and enough rage and misanthropy to reduce even the most staunch optimist to a gibbering, despairing wreck. MASTIFF are here to reduce you to that wreck, and what’s more, you’ll thank them for it.
Rating: 8/10
Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth is set for release on September 10th via eOne Heavy.
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