Review Summary: Mutating without evolving
Mutoid Man’s initial pitch was a simple one: seasoned pros playing high-energy, smart-dumb-fun camp. Since their debut a full decade ago, they've seemingly become something of a repository for all the ideas Cave in and Converge have gotten too "mature" to effectively work with: bouncy hardcore beats, flashy major-key guitar shred, BIG shout-along choruses, and overall senses of carefree, sci-fi-infused zaniness. From the minds that brought you classics like
Jane Doe and
Until Your Heart Stops, they’re a spectacle of pre-Nevermind heavy rock showmanship injected with a super-serum of modern metal and punk— wow! From their 2013 EP
Helium Head through 2017's
War Moans, Mutoid man owned their status as a zany lark so hard they damn near transcended it. Alas, perhaps the increased turbulence of post-COVID life pulls a price from us all, affable metalcore stalwarts included. Though the trio's third album
Mutants puts up an admirable effort to continue in the straightforwardly pleasurable footsteps of their previous work, it's not just their hit-to-miss ratio that's shakier than ever, but their implicit promise that you would never have to think too hard about 'em.
First, the hits! If you're just here for Ben Koller drumming and/or for Steve Brodsky riffing, good news!
Mutants is composed of exactly these two things! The dudes can f
uckin' play, and with High on Fire's Jeff Matz replacing Nick Cageao on bass, the band's considerable assets are, in many ways, much the same as ever. They haven't forgotten their tried-and-true theatrics, either: dig that meaty
chuggachuggaBAM, BAM that sees off each chorus on opener and lead single "Call of the Void", or the gnarled solo Brodsky delivers on the VERY SAME SONG. Alternately, peep "Siren Song"'s chunky stoner-metal groove leaving ample room for Koller's fills, in a similar vein to
Bleeder's almighty "Bridgeburner". Best of all, the tongues-agog atomic punk of "Graveyard Love" proves the band's most gloriously ridiculous slab of innuendo yet, Brodsky once again proving he has some of the keenest performing instincts of any rock frontman working today, and giving Matz's Lemmy-esque low end a nice spotlight to boot. The album's oh-so-gentle lean in an overall less irreverent lyrical direction isn't entirely without its dividends, either: the aforementioned "Call of the Void" puts its energy to great use for an impassioned tirade against nihilism, and closer "Setting Son" enervates similarly with the undercurrent of joie de vivre that has so often set Mutoid Man apart within their family of bands. In isolated moments, this album finds them at their very best: muscular, melodic and massively entertaining.
Outside of these isolated moments… well. Koller's fiddlier math-metal side has never quite been my cuppa, and with Brodsky clearly a bit nostalgic for his throat-shredding 90s salad days, even otherwise-solid rockers like "Demons" wind up more prone than usual to distracted time-signature tomfoolery. Hook-free chugfests like "Unborn" certainly take up a few too many spots in the tracklist too, in lieu of more colorful pastiche exploration a la "Bandages" (I can't blame Matz with any confidence; a few riffs here do have the barest tinge of "
Electric Messiah b-side"). I'm ultimately willing to chalk these up to differences of taste; plenty of folks love midtempo chugs and don't want any ballads, and bless their
FROZEN hearts for it! Less easy to forgive: "Broken Glass Ceiling"'s eye-rollingly misguided grapple with patriarchal privilege, the vagueposting Orwell references of "Memory Hole", and the implications both of these pick up in light of recent, shall we say, shake-ups at the band's Sargent House label (Google is thattaway). The optics there are fraught as all get-out, and though a good-faith reading reveals good intentions, if not much poetry, the subject matter itself feels far too weighty for Mutoid Man's brand of Saturday-morning-cartoon metalcore. That godawful "F
UCKING WEATHER" try for levity on "Broken Glass Ceiling" only speaks to how poorly-suited the band is to such commentary (and to just how good that main riff would probably be in a better song, dangit).
In the event that I'm just reading way too far into things here, hey, maybe I wouldn't have if Brodsky had just written more dumb lyrics about being a lizard-person or having sex with hellspawn! That's all I want from Mutoid Man: catchy, gonzo hard rock that can laugh at itself and still kick some authentic ass. It goes to show how fun and appealing the band's core sound is that
Mutants is the first time Mutoid Man has really felt like a side project, laden with not-quite-theres and exercises reliant on the members' most familiar pockets at the expense of unique flavor and fresh stylistic blood. I can only hope that future releases find the band once more venturing across the wide wide world of loud, exciting guitar music (as they've done with such good humor on
Two Minutes to Late Night), and if not, sheesh, I hope they at least have the sense to K.I.S.S.
