(DGR reviews the latest album by Swiss grind marauders Mumakil.)
Mumakil are a band that I discovered late into their career. The group have been active since 2004, yet it took a split with a personal fave Misery Index for them to land on my radar. But, it is proof that splits can have some success in promoting bands because what Mumakil got up to during the six minutes they occupied on that split grabbed me, and I then found myself somewhat enamored with the group’s 2009 release Behold The Failure – especially because it partially served as my entry and tutorial to more death metal oriented grindcore, as opposed to the usual short blasts and Napalm Death that was my previous exposure.
It’s hard to believe that four years have passed since Behold The Failure; and you sound like a crazy person when trying to tell people that you’ve waited four years for another thirty-five minutes of music. However, Mumakil are a band who have fused death metal into grindcore without morphing into full-blown deathgrind, instead creating the sort of ugly, angry grind that is fueled entirely by blastbeats. When you name your band after the giant war elephant of Lord Of The Rings fame, it’s a signal that you will be a representation of that thing during a war charge. It’s going to be loud, brash, fast, and all too reckless. If you aren’t doing that, then you’ve done a disservice to the mumakil name.
Mumakil deal in spades with the sort of hammering grind mentioned above that just feels absolutely ugly. Everything about it sounds like a sweaty, roaring beast. It makes everything around it feel that way, so much so that one can only imagine a live show being a beer-fueled, swamping, swirling vortex. Continue reading »
