Review Summary: Elephantine blastcore with enough vicious fun to more than make up for it's lack of inventiveness.
In case you haven’t heard the news, grindcore is the new hot subgenre in metal. Surprisingly, grindcore may be the first of the “core” genres to not fade into exodus because of young, stupid bands and enough scene to make Victory Records puke. A lot of grindcore bands are entering the scene and only an average amount is suck-ish. Mumakil, thankfully, are one of the promising new bands to bash-and-thrash their way into the eye of the grindcore crowd.
Mumakil’s recent release
Behold the Failure is a technically sound and catchy albeit typical grind album. The musicians, if so they can be called, crush path through 27 tracks much like their namesake Lord of the Rings creature would: with extreme oliphauntine fury.
Behold the Failure is a short but brutal mass of bone-crushing grind verging on bestial death metal, a combo the band aptly calls “blastcore”. On
The Eye of Wrath, vocalist Thomas spits indecipherable words over a punching guitar line creating the most destructive hook imaginable.
Behold the Failure simultaneously sticks grindcore staples and tosses a few of the rulebook pages into a firepit. It consists of 27 tracks averaging at a minute-and-a-half each. Song titles include such insights as “Pisskeeper”, “Let There Be Meat”, and a personal favorite, “Pigs On Fire.” HOWEVER, Mumakil also adds much more death metal aspects to their grind base, trading a typically high-pitched scream or deep, garbling rumble for a barrel-chested roar and mid-range rasps and swaps usually screeching speeder guitars for a more pummeling down-tuned sound, similar to fellow death-crust-grind outfit Misery Index. If you so choose to confront this leviathan of an album, you will be faced with 27 vicious beast-songs. Be warned, you can’t tell any of the songs apart, and if you peruse your way through the 30-second (or less) iTunes samples, you’ll only walk away with an elated migraine.
This isn’t the top album of 2009. It’s not perfect and it’s not (figuratively) groundbreaking. BUT, Mumakil
have broken the
sound barrier and have put forth a lumbering blastcore album that’s both incredibly fun and piss-yourself frightening to have crank through your auditory canals. They fight for anarchy with music that sounds more like they’re fighting for Sparta.
Behold the Failure is a lyrical assault on all things governmental and proof that Switzerland has more to offer than Celtic metal and some holey cheeses. It’s a predatory elephant crashing through the forest of your ear-hairs. It will pillage your village and rape your women, so enjoy or get the hell out of the way.
