About a year and a half has passed since the blurred beginnings of Leipzig, Eastern Germany‘s Diana, Sebi and Tom, as Mantarochen, when we even thought it was a solo project, through several singles and a S/T album.
We describe the band’s sound, hopefully properly, “a stripped-down, spiky and sharp guitar-driven Post-punk sound, in the 80s NDW tradition of X-Mal Deutschland and Abwärts, with the same powerful expressive urgency and punk attitude, albeit without the gothic drama of the former”
As we were able to ascertain in the previous song, “Grey”, from three months ago and above all in the last proposal, the 3-piece’s sound has enriched of Wave, I wouldn’t call it ‘Cold’, and Psychedelic flavours evolving into an imaginative intoxicating maze coated in grimy churning hues of dull effects and emotive atmospherics from winding skewed synthesizers, brittle jagged guitars, this time with tantalizing Wire nods, and tight rhythms.
A twist and turn ride for over ’60 miles in the wrong direction at night’ on the taut pace of urgent punchy beats and droning driving basslines, punctuated by resonant aching stabs of bristly angular guitar slivers, surrounded by a swirly restless layering of insistently warbling and pulsing keyboard glows, along enveloping forlorn brassy surge, to bring anxious detached vocals, blurring emotional turmoil, through a breakdown turned into a “Reflection”.
Mantarochen‘s 7″ EP “In The Badgers Cave” will be released on May 31st via It’s Eleven Records.
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