siLLy puPPy
Drawn to the album cover like a swarm of flies drawn to a freshly deposited pile of crap on the ground, i was mesmerized by the grotesque and admittedly over-the-top sacrilegious nature of the artwork. LORD MANTIS is a blackened sludge metal act that has arisen from Chicago, IL and unleashed their second album PERVERTOR onto the world in 2012. While black and sludge certainly have their role in this filthy and raw metal, there are elements of industrial and doom that all gestate together to create this magnificent maggot of metal that sounds fairly unique as heart immediately upon the very first hate-filled track “Perverter Of The Will.” And indeed with this band that contains members from Von and Nachmystium does indeed deliver the goods that match the hideous album cover on display. Subject matter includes everything from good old fashioned murder to pedophilia and other perversions such as the glorification of everything filth and indecent.
On the musical side, they take the thick atmospheric approach of certain strains of black metal and marry them with the intense chugging riffing of bands like Meshuggah all the while giving the larger than live and somewhat epic metal music a nice gritty sludge makeover all the while the percussive drumming churns out violent and brutal off-kilter timed beats that range from cozy creepy accompaniments to the spastic and brutal occasional drum roll. Thus the metal can have a monotonous and baleful groove with true tortured vocals of Charlie Fell that exhibit an impressive range as far as extreme metal goes and often remind me of a combo of Vektor and Marilyn Manson. The tempos range from slightly above the mid range that feel like a death march into the abyss to the extremely frenetic as heard on “At The Mouth” which sounds like a diseased animal out on the hunt in the darkened moonless night.
The brilliance of PERVERTOR is more its restraint rather than its outpouring of excesses as many an extreme metal band can deliver too many goods too quickly and ruin the overall delivery of the effect that they are striving to achieve. With this behemoth of a blackened atmospheric sludge attack, riffs are aggressive but conservative. Additional guitar parts are used sparingly and in key moments as to heighten a desired effect. Likewise with the percussion as it chugs along in tandem with the overall theme and serves as bombastic intensifier without deserting its duties for its own personal conquest. Everything here just works. The song structures are strong. The individual musical parts are perfectly woven together to create the perfect gorefest of doomy blackened sludge metal with just enough atmospheric touches to keep the aggressive metal from spiraling into generic and stale turf while delivering a nice production that feels modern yet keeping it all raw and filthy.