By Jason Walker
It’s always nice when I get passed an album along that has “for fans of Vola, Leprous, Voyager, Caligula’s Horse and Between the Buried and Me” in the description; I mean it’s quite literally a list of my favourite bands right now, so there’s no doubt that I’d ever decline a chance to listen to something along those lines.
For the record, I’ve not heard of Mantric before, but I’ve never been one to shy away from new artists; in fact it’s a bit of a hobby of mine, as anyone who knows me can vouch for. So, let’s get down to business: ‘False Negative’ comes in at ten tracks, all of varying length because as with most prog, a song is as long as it needs to be.
‘False Negative’ is packed full of uplifting yet heavy riffs, and big epic choruses and gets right into this from the outset with the opening track of ‘Polyanna’. This song reminds me a lot of the likes of Filter with how it mixes synths with it’s heavy yet oddly poppy chorus, it’s big, it’s in your face and gives you a pretty good idea of how the album’s going to play out. Mantric may only be a trio but they make wonderful use of layering synths and guitar parts which fill out the sound, this sort of approach to prog lends itself to all three playing in tight sync with each other rhythmically, another good example of this is Press To Meco.
A solid example of their tight playing is ‘Queen Fatigue’ with lots of tight little fills dotted around the song, coming across as a more punky number with lots of bouncy hammer-on/off riffs which towards the end of the song ends up straying into black metal territory in a similar manner to some Kvelertak songs.
There’s huge swathes of different influences you can hear through this album: ‘Norwegian Drastard’ ends up coming off as a grungy number that has echoes of Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, ‘Blame The Beggar’ has a strong Foo Fighters sound to it for example. But this isn’t to diminish Mantric’s songwriting by any stretch; it’s nice to see such a fantastic mix of different styles being worked into each of their songs without it being a jarring experience.
To have this sort of variety as a three-piece which often limits the flexibility of sounds is fantastic, each member of the band is a capable musician that adds in little bits here and there to accent the songs they’ve got but it doesn’t feel forced or done for the sake of it. One of my favourite songs on the album is ‘The Towering Mountain’ which again feels quite punky in it’s almost straightforward nature but the tone of the guitar and bass in this over the top of the relentless drum work is giving me restless legs – I just want to run around in a pit real fast to it, hopefully it’ll be in their live set if they end up in Manchester at some point!
‘Every Day Is Independence Day’ sounds a bit closer to the likes of Caligula’s Horse with the disjointed guitar riffs that almost sound out of key along with the off-beat playing, a staple of prog but i’m a shameless sucker for that, also you’ve really got to give the vocals in this song some credit, bloody lovely. If you didn’t know that the Mantric members used to be in a black metal project, you probably will after listening to ‘Darling Demon’ which is one of the heavier songs on this album which while not fully leaning on black metal, definitely shows it’s colours… uhhh.. colour, here.
And finally we come to ‘Starmonger’ – because what is a prog album without a near-ten minute-long epic? It’s a rite of passage at this point innit? It’s a lovely, melancholy slow song to play out with, definitely the right choice to stick it on the end of the album as a nice palate cleanser from the often frantic other songs.
Overall this album shows more influences and styles than I think they give themselves credit for, prog it most definitely is but there’s so much more in there and it speaks volumes for the diversity of influences that Mantric have brought in and it ebbs and flows, maybe only showing for just a moment but it’s still cohesive – get on this, it’s an interesting ride.
FFO: Vola, Leprous, Voyager, Caligula’s Horse and Between the Buried and Me.
- ‘False Negative’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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