ALBUM REVIEW: Plague – Mastiff

Check your face. Is it firmly attached? Because it won’t be after you’re done listening to Hull based misery merchants MASTIFF’s latest offering; second full-length, Plague. Music, as with all art forms, channels and reflects the times it’s created in, and Plague rips off the scab of the now to bring the bubbling, hateful division and disquiet that the world seems to be suffering under welling up to the surface.

Hellcircle churns into life with a rising noisescape, distant screeches and groans mixing with layers of hissing and grinding that evoke an insane asylum sunk into the Mariana trench. It suddenly explodes into a squall of strident blast bears, guttural vocals and growling bass, swinging into a destructive strut. Bubonic is immediate, blazing tremolo picked guitars punctuated by a dipping, chugging riff that opens out into held chords and wretched vocals. A hallmark of MASTIFF’s sound is their suffocating density, their riffs seeming to swallow all aural space. Huge gang vocals are whipped away by relentless blast beats that stutter into a breakdown worthy of the sickest deathcore. Brainbleed is an absolutely savage pummelling, slowly revolving lower and lower before morphing into layers of static, gasps and sobbing.

Quarantine rises amid snarling bass and snaking guitars, tome heavy drums sounding cavernous before the instruments coalesce and explode into a predatory, grinding riff. Vermin hits like a swarm of biting rodents, machine gun, staccato snares puncturing a wall of feedback. Disgustingly thick bass drops, rumbling like infra-sound, atonal guitars ringing in like warning sirens around it as the track lurches from one irresistible buried groove to another. Torture lives up to its name, unstoppable blast beats and slap like chords carrying truly despicable vocals along with them.

Weep threatens to crack skulls with hammer blow kicks locked in tight with the riffs, driving a ragged hardcore riff that ends with MASTIFF evoking shades of their last release, 2017’s Bork. Sprawling closer Black Death is unhurried, ponderous, grinding chords lumbering away over tentatively building drums and throat-ruining vocals. It climbs to a zenith, as inexorable as being crushed to death by a collapsing tower block.

Plague isn’t a subtle record. There’s no glimpse of hope, there’s no light at the end of the reeking, rat infested tunnel. There are only crushing riffs, inhuman bellows and a sense of triumphant, rebellious catharsis. This is an album to rise up, start the fires, and tear down tyrants to. And with the world as it is, MASTIFF have delivered the album we need.

Rating: 8/10

Plague is setfor release February 1st via APF Records. 

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