Mental Horror
Proclaiming Vengeance
Deathvomit / Necropolis
Some people will never get it. And I’m not just singling out boys who work in guitar stores, though they’re part of the problem. It’s not that it all sounds the same. It’s not that Mental Horror play like they heard a Ramones record, thought, “Too complicated,” and then dedicated the rest of their lives to warped Hellhammer demos, beer and murder. It’s not even the mood of unrepentent, opaque hate that the sleeve art unwittingly evokes. What makes groups like Mental Horror so fucking brilliant is that they make death metal like rock and roll SHOULD sound. An amphetamine and pentagram-fuelled kick in the face. Sloppy, yeah. Repetitive, yeah. Evil, yeah. Long-haired, yeah. Screamingnoisekillyourmotherandapriest, yeah FUCK yeah. This is what danger sounds like. Fuckers.
Mental Horror ranks up their with Disgorge and Headhunter Death Cult and Sarcofago as the best in Brazilian death metal EVER. Proclaiming Vengeance is so fucking fabulous with the all-pervasive sense of disorientation and blood-intoxication in their songs; songs that speed up and slow down without warning, drums that pound like a vicious headache, riffs and solos that collapse over one other, high notes that hit like broken glass. A glorious mess. The Alan West-as-a-spastic-on-angel-dust soloing is way thrilling. I can’t say enough about the solos, repetitious, breakneck, blood simple, but so confusing and scraping. Like Eric Clapton vomiting on his strings after he saw his kid’s dead body, basically.
There are even a couple of fucking lovely (in the traditional aesthetic sense of the word) guitar solo instrumentals in there – so sinister and so simmering with malice barely contained by the superior musicianship – as if to say “piss off, see, we can feel your normal human emotions, so here’s a moment of mortal beauty, and now we have to get back to pulping internal organs” – and then it’s a headfirst dive back into pitching waves of noise and nausea.
So if you’re expecting pretty songs and technical expertise and catchy bits then you should fuck off and dig out your secret stash of Incubus records while swooning over Brendan’s dreamy bare chest – you’re a cunt anyway. But if you want to be kicked in the face by opaque dischordant third world death roar, then press play. If you don’t understand why this record is so awesome, then you’re a snob or you’re too bourgeois for metal in the first place.
Necropolis Records: http://www.necropolisrecords.com
