NEW ALBUM "DEPRECIPICE" OUT MARCH 22ND
Everything Mastiff does is in the name of intensity. Since forming amid the misery of Kingston-upon-Hull in 2013, the five-piece have crashed extreme metal, sludge and hardcore together to create the most brutal sonic onslaughts possible all in the name of keeping their music fresh, raw and seething.
Signing to MNRK Heavy three years ago, Mastiff’s commitment to blunt-force aggression remains untempered. Their 2021 album, Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth, was described by Blabbermouth’s Dom Lawson as a “horrifying slab of disgust” and “a sustained scream in the face of uncontrollable madness”. Now comes its long-anticipated follow-up: Depricipice – an album that, somehow, smacks even harder than anything this band have unchained before produced by longtime collaborator Joe Clayton (Wallowing, Ithaca, Tuskar) at Manchester’s No Studio.
“We’ve gone quite a lot towards a hardcore sound,” says Hodge. “Where the last one was more death metal, this one’s a lot more staccato: a lot more defined, riff-wise.”
Unlike so many of their extreme metal peers right now, though, Mastiff didn’t source this rejuvenated savagery from the anxieties and frustrations of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the lockdowns ended and real life started to resume in 2021 and 2022, Hodge and Lee noticed the spirits of the world around them lifting. Feelings of trauma and isolation were beginning to enter people’s rear-view mirrors – and it was an overcoming that the duo couldn’t relate to. Lee was mourning the loss of his mother, while Hodge realised he was still grieving over the death of his five-day-old son, Isaac, in 2010.
“The album’s called Deprecipice, and that pretty much sums up where me and James were when we wrote it,” says the singer. “We were both standing back on the edge of a depressive void.”
Void is the second single from Deprecipice, an intense hybrid of hardcore, punk & metal, the soundtrack to Neurosis, Converge & Cursed battling in a Roman Coliseum.
Guitarist / vocalist James Lee Ross: “Void might not fall in the literal middle of ‘Deprecipice’, but in many ways it acts as a thematic centrepiece, both musically and lyrically. There’s a strong Converge influence in the guitars for sure, and we wanted it to have a ragged, almost punk sound that gradually evolves into this monstrous, lurching breakdown. Dan and Joe (Clayton, producer) then worked on washing the song over with some nasty, unsettling electronic noise that gives it this really queasy vibe.
For a good while we had the music finished but hadn’t landed on a lyric, but then in the few weeks between the initial album tracking and Jim’s vocal session my mother passed away after a short but brutal battle with lung cancer, and this song ended up becoming the outlet for all of the pain and grief I had spilling out of me. To suddenly not have that safety net of the person who created you, for them to just be gone with nothing to take their place, it really did feel like a void opened in my chest, and this song was my humble attempt to put that feeling into words”
With Deprecipice, MASTIFF has a made a magnum opus that bleeds with genuine pain. The record will be released on CD, LP, and digital formats.
To support Deprecipice, MASTIFF will hit the road in March touring the UK, which includes a stop at London’s legendary The Black Heart, alongside UK extreme metal outfit, Yersin. See all confirmed dates below.
MASTIFF w/ Yersin:
3/22/2024 Polar Bear – Hull, UK
3/23/2024 Audio – Glasgow, UK
3/24/2024 Bannermans - Edinburgh, UK
3/27/2024 The Black Heart - London, UK
3/28/2024 Green Door Store - Brighton, UK
3/29/2024 Crofters Rights - Bristol, UK
3/30/2024 Devils Dog - Birmingham, UK
3/31/2024 Rough Trade - Nottingham, UK
