ALBUM REVIEW: The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze – Mantar

After their signing to Nuclear Blast and the successful release of the brutal Ode To The Flame, German duo MANTAR are back with their most recent release, and third studio album, The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze.

This newest release keeps in line with the fire symbolism that is ever present in MANTAR’s albums, but the duo has formed a primarily more blackened sound overall here. This is not to say, however, that they have become a black metal band. MANTAR manage to combine this blackened element with multiple other genres as they have in the past, including crust punk and sludge, to create an album where no track is the same, and every one hits just as heavy as the last.

The Knowing is the first track on the album and is starkly different to the rest of the tracks. An eerie, bleak piece lasting only one minute and thirty seconds, it features a harrowing arrangement of acoustics that crescendos and then bursts aggressively into Age Of The Absurd. An extremely catchy guitar lick gives way to another acoustic arrangement, before immediately jumping into a brutal, melodic track that perfectly complements guitarist and vocalist Hanno Klänhardt’s howling voice. The main body of this track is an impressively heavy mix of Klänhardt’s vocals and riffs, and Erinc Sakarya’s unrelentingly tight drums – Age Of The Absurd is the closest the duo comes to a classically black metal track on this release, and they do it well.

The next two tracks on the album, Seek + Forget and Taurus, also follow a strong black metal influence throughout but do so with a much more conforming rhythm. Klänhardt’s vocals in these two tracks lighten somewhat, and the lyrics are much clearer. For Taurus especially, the track has an angry entity within it that encourages movement from the listener.

The vocals of the album tend to stick to this black metal influence, but the rest of the album takes a lot more from MANTAR‘s roots, leaning towards sludgy riffs and crust punk time signatures. Midgard Serpent (Seasons of Failure) opens with a melody so groovy that it wouldn’t be amiss nestled amongst tracks from bands such as MASTODON and GRAVEYARD, whereas Dynasty Of Nails has less of an overruling genre focus, and ends up feeling a little chaotic structurally and hard to follow along with.

One track that shows the true range of Klänhardt’s vocals is the higher tempo Eternal Return. Strikingly different to the vocals in previous tracks, the black metal influence is dropped and instead Klänhardt seems to return to the crust punk roots of the duos earlier albums. The higher tempo also makes for a shorter song that deserved more time on the album than it was given.

Obey The Obscene succeeds the aggressive track before it with the opening sound of organs and a return to the vocals on the earlier half of the album. However, the aggression is not lost on this track and both Obey The Obscene and Anti Eternia hold a sludgy element within them that characterises the second half of this album. Throughout all these tracks, Erinc Sakarya’s drumming techniques seem to mesh seamlessly with whatever direction the MANTAR duo decide to take and is done so with impressive precision.

The Formation Of Night, and the penultimate track Teeth Of The Sea, also have groovy melodies that will make listeners want to move along with them. Teeth Of The Sea is particularly easy to listen to, and has the most stoner influences of the whole album. With a catchy tune and perfectly timed breaks this track, along with the earlier Age Of The Absurd, are two perfect yet contrasting examples of what can happen when a band such as MANTAR has the ability to blend multiple genres into an album that is enormous and aggressively potent.

The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze finishes off its collection by bringing us another great example of MANTAR’s unique multi-genre sound. The Funeral offers up a strong sludgy base that breaks through the heavily distorted guitar, a melodic drum piece, and those howling vocals that we hear more of in the first half of the album.

There are a multitude of different genres lining this newest release, and by doing so MANTAR have managed to create a fantastic record with The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze. This is an album that follows the roots of their previous releases and evolves it into something that takes the very essence of the stoner, black metal, and crust punk and creates something which at once sounds like all three, and the resulting experience is definitely worth a listen.

Rating: 8/10

The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

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