Mantar: Opening Heaven’s Gate

When Erinç Sakarya and Hanno Klänhardt of MANTAR unleashed third album The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze on the world in 2018, it shot them spiralling into the heavy metal microcosm. They hit the top ten in their homeland Germany, spent months on tour taking their sludge metal sound far and wide to Japan, Mexico and South Africa, and found themselves on the lips of the industry hype machine. As Klänhardt tells us from his home office in the Floridian suburbs, they reacted to their newfound fame “in the way we usually react to everything, we just laugh it off and don’t take that shit too serious.”

Baptised in the blood of punk bands long gone, MANTAR were living each day as it comes. They weren’t thinking about follow-ups, because they hadn’t thought about getting that far. “We don’t make long term plans. We did not plan to do a fourth album, we didn’t plan to make a third and second and so on. We make one album, concentrate completely on that and when we’re done with that, we digest it and then we think about it a year later, like ‘should we make another record?’”

Drummer Sakarya believed the band had more to give, that they could go beyond the sound they’d shot into the spotlight with. As Klänhardt explains, it was the driving force behind following up The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze and 2020’s covers album Grungetown Heroes II. “We knew this time we had to reinvent ourselves a little bit; the first, second and third records pretty much go in the same direction sound wise, and we did not want to make a fourth album that sounds the same, we needed to push the reset button.”

But as Hanno would learn, you better be careful what you wish for. Creating Pain Is Forever And This Is The End was a labour of love that nearly ended their career and could’ve cost Klänhardt his life. After The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze’s cultural shock recording sessions spent at TORCHE guitarist Jonathan Nuñez’s Miami home had left Klänhardt scarred – “usually it takes me two weeks to record vocals for an album, I pretty much recorded the vocals for Modern Art in six hours because I wanted to leave so bad, I just wanted to get the fuck out because I was nervous, I didn’t feel comfortable” – he hoped hopping home to Germany and joining up with Sakraya would be a blessing in disguise.

But on his drummer and best friend’s wedding day, he tore his meniscus and swapped the rehearsal room for four weeks of hospital stays. By the end of 2020, they found themselves back in Germany ready to roll again, only for Klänhardt to “slip up in the supermarket” and tear his ACL on the first night. In two swift moves, the band slowly began to break itself up.

“After a couple of weeks, we had to give up because it felt like for the first time ever the universe was working against us,” he explains, every word soaked in the pain of that memory. “It felt like a big knot in our brains, I was honestly broken-hearted – I had a lot of money issues and we had to accept that we could not pull it off, we’ve always been very punk rock and on top of things, and this time, the stars aligned against us.”

With medical bills piling up, imposter syndrome circling like sharks, and radio silence between the two of them, Klänhardt found himself thinking about the end. “I left Germany very depressed and broken-hearted because we thought we didn’t have what it takes to make an album anymore, we didn’t talk for months and then I wrote an email saying ‘hey, I’m cool with the band being over’; if we quit this band, no problem, shake hands, we’ve been friends 15 years before we started the band, we can go back to being just friends,” he smiles, sitting up in his seat before dropping the punchline. “But what I’m not happy with is the reason; nothing in the world except for ourselves can dictate when this band is going to end, I’m not going to accept it unless you and me make the decision right now.”

Like a game of Russian Roulette with their livelihoods, Klänhardt offered a lifeline once more to Sakraya: he’ll write some riffs at home in Florida, shoot them over to Germany, and if Sakraya liked them, record the drums and send them back. And by god, it worked. The sessions gave birth to Pain Is Forever And This Is The End. It’s ten tracks twist their sludge metal into a black metal punk party. They aimed to make an album that “sounds like THE HELLACOPTERS playing with DARKTHRONE” and wrote riffs “that sound like BLUE ÖYSTER CULT” and starting mixing “sinister dark sounding melodies” with “groovy CHRIS ISAAK vibes”.

The album’s sound is urgent, hellbent on throwing you through the cage ceiling like your Mankind to MANTAR’s Undertaker. If it hadn’t landed like that, there’d be no MANTAR today. “We knew with this record that if when it was done, and we listened back to it and felt ‘eh, it’s okay’, we would have shaked hands and the band would’ve been over. There’s so many bands who make records out of habit, but we have a punk DNA background so if you can’t fight no more, like a good Viking you go to the forest, hang yourself and go up to Valhalla.”

Only, they haven’t hung themselves, even if making the album bought Klänhardt within moments of waking up in Valhalla himself. “I was so ready to give up, but I knew quitting in the long run would hurt even more, but just pulling through put me in a very dark place psychologically, like mentally and physically.”

He became a bag of bones, losing so much weight his immune system gave up on him. His relationship with his friends and his wife were tested, too. “It was night and day in my fucking studio working on this, I lost touch with reality – making this record was so fucking tedious and exhausting.”

But for an album so exhausting and tedious to make, Pain Is Forever And This Is The End has left Klänhardt feeling a little more whole again. “I see this record as the head of a bear that hangs on my wall. It could have very easily went the other direction, but I won – I did not fucking lose everything I have, including my complete mental and physical health while making this record, so I’m proud to fucking come out of this alive.”

The duality between pride and pain seeps through the album’s sound and themes. It’s drilled into every line. Take opener Egoisto for example, where it’s opening line screams ‘I live in a house that is made out of bones, on every wall hangs a cross.’ It’s hard to swallow for Klänhardt. “It’s a reference to writing this record, because it refers to my physical injuries and the shit situation I was in and the problem is when you write an album or create art, you build a house but I build this house from within so after a few days, you see nothing but walls. I didn’t build a house, I built a fucking jail, like a dungeon for myself. And the cross refers to my big mouth promising myself and the world that I would make another record no matter what it takes, like a cross that reminds you in your almost religious beliefs in your own music – it almost drove me fucking nuts.”

But Pain Is Forever… goes beyond their personal pain. It’s a satirical commentary on the endless echo chamber we’ve sunk ourselves into as a civilisation. It starts with its stripped back artwork, a clear departure from Modern Art…’s grandiose gold. “We didn’t want to make a record that looks like a metal record; oh it’s black, big fucking news. It’s almost arrogant it’s so simple,” he spits, showing off the vinyl set of the album. On its cover is the iconic MANTAR logo embellished in a cosmic scene against a white background. But not all is what it seems. Inside, you can slip out the stars in place of a placenta, and the gatefold references the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides of 1997.

“It has a lot to do with the fact people cannot accept their role in the universe, so we wanted to make the artwork look like a brochure for Scientology that you get somewhere in the streets of London or down here in Florida, where someone says ‘hey, we have all the answers, just trust us’ because we live in a weird time where people demand very simple answers to very complex questions, it’s the same with religion, with cults, and with fucking politics,” he says. “People claim they have simple answers to complex questions, so let’s make artwork that looks like a flyer for people who want to be lied to and the outcome is always the same,” he says, opening the Heaven’s Gate-referencing image of Klänhardt and Sakraya mimicking the events “that’s where you end up.”

Ultimately, the artwork acts as a primer for the album within. Dare to dive in to Pain Is Forever… and you’ll find cynical and satirical commentary on the “grotesque appreciation for stupidity” we have as a society. “People have a very big problem accepting that they’re part of the big picture, that they’re literally nothing more than star dust. They want to have a meaningful purpose, which is fine but they’re scared to admit that they’re not endless.”

Whilst MANTAR haven’t made an album about Covid-19, it’s influence on Klänhardt’s lyrical inspiration is paramount. “People came up with the weirdest conspiracy theories, and whether they believed that crap or they didn’t, they just wanted to be part of something, they wanted to post it on social media to be part of that whether it’s true or not; they want simple answers, and it’s just so easy turning on the news, it’s a never ending source of inspiration into how dynamics of several people work, like an individual like you and me might be intelligent persons but if it was two or three or four of us, we’d already be an hysterical mess.”

Whilst you can argue it’s a satirical approach to America’s obsession with guns, god, and government, Klänhardt sees it as cynicism. Which is both a blessing and a curse, but it’s a burden he’s willing to bear. “It’s so cynical, yet I don’t like cynicism, it’s the weapon of the mentally week because if you don’t have anything constructive to add, you hide behind cynicism, but I couldn’t help myself and I wanted to make that perfectly clear.”

For Klänhardt, it boils down to not taking life too seriously. It’s a side product of his fight for this album, and for his life. It’s taught him to remember that it doesn’t matter. “Literally nothing except you and your loved ones matters, everything else does not matter; the colour of your wall doesn’t matter, the colour of your skin doesn’t matter, or how much money you have, it doesn’t matter if a journalist likes this record – I have to remind myself of that.”

“A lot of people have a hard time accepting that, including me. They think the only way to give themselves some meaning is to be part of something, whether it’s religion, a cult, politics, or a relationship; they can’t face the fact that they’re themselves, they can’t find peace and that’s sad because that leads to fear and fear leads to aggression and I’m sure that most aggression In the world and war and evil is based on that fear.”

But Pain Is Forever… isn’t preaching to the masses. It’s not indoctrinating its beliefs. It’s simply existing as another reading of the world around us. “With all due respect, we’re not a political band. I report, I don’t judge, I don’t offer better ideas or solutions to problems. I don’t claim it’s right, I don’t want people to act according to my lyrics, I just hope they have a good time because no matter if it’s dark music or jolly music, in the end, it’s made to give you a good time.”

Pain Is Forever And This Is The End is out now via Metal Blade Records.

Like MANTAR on Facebook.