EP REVIEW: Chaos Matter – Burn The Mankind

Brazil’s BURN THE MANKIND are a band that perfectly exemplifies the importance of quality over quantity. Since their formation in 2009, the band have only managed to release an EP in 2010 and their excellent debut full length, To Beyond in 2015, with a smattering of singles in amongst, with every release being excellent, bar none. The band’s latest EP, Chaos Matter, comes just a few months shy of five years since their debut saw the light of day, and serves as the bands crowning achievement to date, coupling the brilliant, technical musicianship of the band with a much more polished, punchy sound.

The Red Rise is an impressive start to the record, with excellent, intricate drumming, thick, chugging guitar lines and equally bellicose vocals making for a powerful and intense opener. There’s plenty of great, jarring flourishes and slick, soaring leads, which pepper the visceral nature of the song with some magnificent leads, making this as catchy as it is vicious. Sulfur, a brief yet brilliant slab of demented, discordant savagery courtesy of the juddering guitars, tight, steady percussion and dense gutturals, interspersed with clean, but nonetheless feral, moments, proving to be a fierce and punchy affair.

Sudden Inversion makes full use of a noticeably more focused, groove inflected sound that gives this a more confident and weighty feel, with the vocals injecting plenty of aggression into what is an already domineering and muscular sound. It’s another song that doesn’t mess around, with some eerie, minimalist melodies giving this particular track a darker sound that works extremely well. Weigh Like Lead, a measured, slow burning piece of music with imaginative hooks and some varied vocals, ranging from the as always monstrous growls to huge, baritone cleans, all of which contribute to ending this E.P on a fantastically epic note.

Chaos Matter heralds a significant rise in both the quality of BURN THE MANKIND‘s music and a step up with terms of the production, something which really elevates this record above the album and EP that preceded it. The sharper mix and far leaner, focused songwriting style means there’s little, if anything, on here that could be classed as filler, with each song proving to be a stand out track in its own right. There’s a slight, but noticeable, shift towards a much more melodic and catchy sound, but there’s still plenty of hints at the technical edge that defined the bands early work. With any luck, there won’t be a five years interim between this record and whatever follows it, because capitalising on the fact that they have put out a record of this calibre could very well establish the band as an act to watch in years to come.

Rating: 8/10

Chaos Matter is out now via Emanzipation Productions.

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