Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Mantar - Pain Is Forever and This Is the End (2022)

Although I have seen various covers for Mantar releases over the years I only joined the dots to their music this past week or so.  The world of sludge, whilst far from unfamiliar to me is also not a regularly trodden path for me either.  Having no past experience of the band made listening to Pain Is Forever and This Is The End quite an organic experience and what started out as a cursory listen off the back of an interview I read, soon become a regular play most days.  It is not often that an unplanned listen breaches my (albeit lose) code of using Trello to map out my listening but Mantar have a sort of ugly catchiness to them that appeals to my dark heart I guess.

Whilst I would not say that music like Mantar's is the reason that I got into metal, it most certainly is an example of why I have continued to listen to this form of music for over thirty years.  PIFaTITE is a dirty record.  It is full of middle finger in the air, raised to the entire world, calling out all the bullshit of life from the highest rooftop.  The irreverence it has is mature in form and is not simply angry grown men shouting about how unfair or unjust things are.  It is a record that pricks at your skin as opposed to slicing or slashing it, like a cat kneading your flesh for attention, its claws just catching the very surface of your skin without needing to penetrate too far to get the result it craves.

The infectious nature of tracks like Hang 'Em Low (So the Rats Can Get 'Em) and Grim Reaping draw their hooks across you as opposed to just burying them in and in a way this is the flaw of the record.  Once I have been infected by these hooks, I want more.  By way of comparison, there are other tracks on here that I still cannot hear as I look at the tracklisting despite me having played this album for a week at least twice a day.  Of Frost and Decay and Horder just have no memorability and this creates a sense of imbalance on the record.

Still, I cannot get away from the fact that I thoroughly enjoy this in the main and it will probably be on my rotation list for a few more weeks to come.  They are on my Trello board now at least.