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.”
Bite Radius” begins Deprecipice in particularly apoplectic form. There’s no fancy buildup to its attack of hard-edged guitar chords and skull-rattling snares, and that rampage is quickly joined by Hodge’s incensed, mic-distorting snarls. Imagine Mastodon recording music on the most aggravating day of their lives and you begin to understand the impact Mastiff bring.
Deprecipice’s hardcore edge barges in through a series of unrepentant breakdowns, from “Bite Radius” to the cataclysmic drop at the end of “Everything Is Ending”. Afterwards, the scurrying punk drums of “Skin Stripper”, the choking atmosphere of “Cut Throat” (featuring US noise/doom brutes Primitive Man) and the immense wall of guitars during “Serrated” find new ways to make unflinching audial violence feel compelling throughout.
With Deprecipice, Mastiff have made a magnum opus that bleeds with genuine pain.
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
