Review Summary: Devil’s in the diner
Good experimental records should make you ask more questions the deeper you dig into them, and good
lawd do I have a full notepad’s worth for the anonymous minds behind the industrial/black metal/jazz/blues/ambient/noise rock mainstay Mamaleek. Their latest record
Diner Coffee is a treacherous treaclelish hexhaven of jagged contours interspersed amidst murky progressions, all captured to great effect by one of the more accomplished production efforts I’ve heard from anyone this year: it’s rare to hear slick blues jams and scuzz-soaked noise rock showcased alongside one another (often simultaneously) to such mutual extremes, but Mamaleek coax the perfect tones out from every part of their intimidatingly broad palette. As for the ends they apply this to,
Diner Coffee takes the sludged-out blues romps of 2020’s stellar
Come and See and pares them down into something less rambunctious and an extra shade more sinister. It may not hammer down your front door in the same way as its predecessor, but you can bet this record is lurking somewhere across your street with both eyes on places they shouldn’t be.
In line with that sense of an unseen scheming presence, things rarely go quite as you’d expect. Opener-in-effect “Boiler Room” lays this down in short order, trading off coquettish blues licks against throaty outbursts of metal, the kind of escalating ping-pong match that whips up an aura of
this will have an ugly end well before the end of its second cycle. However, the band subsume the track’s coursing momentum into evasive industrial soundscapes that meander through the rest of its runtime and come out twice as disconcerting for it. This is just one of many twists to come: “Badtimers”’ innocuous opening has the quality of devotional organ music, the kind of opening-credits shit played to welcome a congregation. This proves to be a sly framing device for its pervading sense of ritualistic uncanniness - the pace remains ceremoniously slow and the track’s sequences are asserted through laborious repetition, an alternating churn of uneasy chords, distant operatic gurgles and fleeting pinpricks of distortion. Like all the most disturbing rituals, the full machinations are never entirely in view: the piece sheds intensity (or at least heaviness) as it builds intrigue, its hints of metal and cultish chants fully exchanged for ghoulish blues by the close. It’s not the kind of track that elicits a firm read - really, it’s a montage of at least four conventional-ish tracks-that-might-have-been - but it is a case study in Mamaleek’s mercurial interchange of ideas, easily enticing enough to stand as a primary attraction.
Further testament to this, “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage” builds to the most traditional payoff-driven metal eruption on the album, yet is somehow the least satisfying piece for it (a worthy benchmark all the same); on the other hand, “Wharf Rats in the Moonlight” packs the kind of delirious sax-noise-metal meltdown that might as well have been custom-crafted as a supermagnet for misapplied comparisons with free jazz and phwoar baby,
that’s more like it keep them lines blurred. The closer “Diner Coffee” is in some ways my favourite piece here, purely for the stylistic baldness with which it juxtaposes the record’s most superficially straightforward blues jam with its most outwardly threatening vocal performance. The simplest tricks are keepers for a reason, and this is one in particular works a charm for conjuring up some unforeseen
Alice Isn’t Dead /
Twin Peaks S3 encounter with a bad-Satan-person-entity in a shabby eatery just off a highway that, so we glean, is unlikely to lead to the final destination we intended. Mamaleek could work a worthwhile twist into any tale.
So,
Diner Coffee is a darkly delicious record and Mamaleek show their worth as veteran practitioners of disarming songwriting and volatile stylistic shifts. They have a long history of fascinating oddities, although they have reaped modest rewards as such: rewind through their near-decade on the Flenser, and you’ll find Mamaleek started their tenure there in the company of such names as Deafheaven and Have A Nice Life. Where the former has long since bankrupted its modest creative inclinations on incorrigible kitsch and the latter has all but disappeared under the shadow of their initial promise, Mamaleek have sidestepped between unlikely directions with clear inspiration but little concern for wider palatability (in this respect more comparable with other long-time labelmates Kayo Dot).
Come and See was a decisive step out of the shadows for them in both direction and reception, and if
Diner Coffee is twisted, oblique and, though less abrasive, perhaps more challenging in some respects, the sheer richness of ideas and atmosphere here should be ample compensation.
