If you’re in the mood for a good crushing, the latest album from Mastiff should help you get that out of your system. The band is a five-piece outfit from Hull, UK, and comes loaded with devotion to sludge, black metal, and all the varieties of ‘core styles from the 2000s. It’s a rousing blend of savage power that’s ready for the mosh pit as it is for your next clandestine ritual in the woods. The band’s new song, “Endless,” is one of the more immediately blackened songs on the record, but still brings in the hardcore energy. It’s a blend that’s reminiscent of bands like All Pigs Must Die, but with a more overt influence of bands like Converge, and if you listen closely, some Botch, Cave In and Coalesce sneaks in there as well.
Indeed, here’s how the band describes the song:
“Endless” is one of the earlier songs we wrote for the new record, and feels in a way like a microcosm of the whole album, in that it’s all over the place sonically, yet somehow hangs together coherently! It goes from this shockingly anthemic — if not quite melodic — blackened opening, through a sinister chuggy bridge, and then ends in a chaotic, 90’s-Converge-breakdown. Lyrically it’s a bit of a meditation on the helplessness that comes when a human being becomes an emotional bargaining chip in a broken-down relationship. Typical jolly Mastiff fare, really.
As for the video, the band is “so disgustingly happy with how the video turned out too.” They go on to say that “Our old mate and Hull native Stew Baxter helped us put together a grimy, raw promo that feels in part a direct homage to some of the early-00’s Metalcore videos that inspired us so much back in the day, and part like a CCTV feed catching a crime against music on tape.”
The band’s excellent new album, Leave Me The Ashes of the Earth comes out on September 10 via eOne.