Mantar doesn’t make compromises. Never. In 2022, they released the polished and wide-ranging “Pain Is Forever and This Is the End”, adding a new string to their blackened death-punk bow — a desire to innovate, to finish what they started with “The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze”. This shift synonymous with renewal and critical success in their own country (the album reached #2 on the German charts) left some fans skeptical about this stylistic change...
“Today, we’re trying to destroy what we built with the last album. There’s a certain beauty in disappointing people’s expectations”. This is how Hanno presented “Post Apocalyptic Depression”, repeating their motto to those who got lost along the way: KILL, DESTROY, FUCK SHIT UP. The cover is once again painted by Aron Wiesenfeld, whose aesthetic echoes that of their debut album “Death By Burning” as if to reconnect with their initial aspirations: a raw, instinctive punk approach.
No compromise, we said. Almost on a whim, the duo wrote around twenty songs, kept twelve and locked themselves away in the studio for a few days. “We simply used the equipment we found on site. We wanted it to be as primitive as possible,” explains Hanno. Fast and dirty. Unvarnished. Raw. Punk. From the very first seconds of “Absolute Ghost”, the messy feedback noise and “Check! Check!”, you know that this bomb made of nails and crushed glass will be a filthy and dangerous one, ready to blow your head off. Their ferocious energy bursts out of the speakers.
Tempered like switchblade steel, this album stabs you in the cheek, especially when Hanno barks at you with all his venom. More compact than their first album, no track on this record exceeds 4 minutes: a concise testament to their punk origins. Anthemic chants, “Rex Perverso”, ‘Principle of Command’, ‘Dogma Down’ or ‘Halsgericht’ (I could name them all…), will undeniably enhance their live setlists. We can picture ourselves sweating blood and water in a frantic moshpit already.
The debut single “Halsgericht” (which translates as “right of life or death”) features punk guitars that bite you in the calf. Never have we enjoyed being shouted at in German so much. And if the approach doesn’t necessarily lend itself to it, Mantar tries new things such as much clearer and comprehensible vocals on “Dogma Down” and “Church of Suck”.
Shooting from the hip with an emotional palette ranging from hatred of everything to hatred for everything, and a touch of derision for everything and especially oneself, the album is driven by a gripping rage but also by the conciseness of the tracks, as melodic as they can be. Let’s not forget that their previous album, “Pain Is Forever and This Is the End”, wasn’t easy to record and the fruit of several rethinkings: it ended up being a success, despite nearly causing the duo to implode. This new album is a response to this bitterness. It’s a conscious, thoughtful pared-down effort that narrow down everything – the songs, the style and production – to the essentials. To the very essence of Mantar. The very best of Mantar.
By confining their sound to that raw anger-driven energy, “Post Apocalyptic Depression” reminds us what a fucking rock album should be: unpretentious, immediate, unpredictable and dangerous. In this respect, it can easily be filed between the work of its illustrious precursors The Stooges and Motörhead, no less. Reduced to the basics, remains the essential: Mantar’s identity. On album closer “Cosmic Abortion”, Hanno spits it in your face if you hadn’t already figured it out: KILL, DESTROY, FUCK SHIT UP.
Last modified: 14 February 2025
