ALBUM REVIEW: Mana Regmata – Heavy Meta

How do you harness the energy and breadth of EVERY TIME I DIE, RUSH and THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN? It seems a perplexing task of gargantuan proportions, but stepping up to the plate is Massachusetts quintet HEAVY META. Since their conception way back in 2013, the band has grown and evolved to try and quell such a cauldron of influences. We saw glimmers of it on their promising self-titled EP in 2019, but now they come back to the fore with their debut full-length Mana Regmata.

A DIY band through and through, the members of HEAVY META have almost solely managed every aspect of this album, from the writing and recording to the artwork and production. They called upon the mastering services of New Alliance East’s Nick Zampiello, but for all intents and purposes, this is an unabashed, unabridged, unimpeded snapshot of what HEAVY META are all about. Clocking in at 50 minutes across eight songs, this is anything but a ‘snapshot’, but the ability to touch upon each of their listed influences, and actually deliver on them as well, is a stunning accomplishment.

So where do we start? Taking a look at those already mentioned, Delusions definitely carries the hardcore breaks of EVERY TIME I DIE at their bruising best; the groove and grandeur of RUSH is plain as day on Vicious Wishes; and the frenetic energy of THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN is tantalisingly laced throughout the record. But the buck doesn’t stop there: Psalm VI sounds as if it’s been taken straight from the CONVERGE playbook; the end of Worms is prime PRIMUS; and comparisons to the career of MIKE PATTON can be made throughout.

It’s a solid homage to their litany of musical heroes, and therein lies the beauty of keeping a project confined to within the members of a group. You can take those influences and impressions and mould them into something new. But this occasionally works as a double-edged sword if you’re unable to boil all of these ideas down into a single product, and a band may toe the line of being indefinable and carrying no ownable identity.

Mana Regmata toes that thin line very precariously, but it is key to point out that they never fall fully into that identity-less quagmire. There are moments where the influence is so clear that the work does sound like a deep cut from another band. But there is enough of a thread from start to end that, given proper exposure to the record and (hopefully) an extended body of HEAVY META work in the future, listeners will take note of the howled vocals of frontman Patrick Dupras, for example, or the maniacal tub thumping of Rich Dixon.

All in all, Mana Regmata is an album that deserves repeated listens, but more crucially, it needs repeated listens. That repetition is where the record and the band begins to shine. In an album of all-out aural assault from a proggy mathcore outfit, it’s bizarrely the nuances of the performance that will elevate HEAVY META to a band you ought to pay attention to. 

Rating: 7/10

Mana Regmata is out now via self-release.

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