Album review: Mastiff – For All The Dead Dreams

You don’t so much listen to Mastiff’s music as you survive it. The Hull misery-mongers have long made a sport of ruining days, but on For All The Dead Dreams, they’ve turned sheer desolation into an art form. Across five tracks and a brief 15 minutes, they deliver the musical equivalent of being repeatedly head-butted by a bulldozer and somehow it feels absolutely glorious.

Opener Soliloquy sets the tone with riffs thicker than Hull’s beloved gravy, all the while vocalist Jim Hodge spews bile like a man possessed. When he bellows about being buried ‘in a shit-filled grave’, you can practically smell the nihilism. It’s the kind of track that makes you question your life choices while simultaneously wanting to punch the sky.

Rotting Blossoms follows with untainted fury and circle pit-baiting chaos, while Decimated Graves mixes death-metal heft with hardcore’s snarling immediacy. It’s weirdly rhythmic in the most brutal way, making you want to hit the pit for a dance and not to cause destruction. A Story Behind Every Light adds a gut-wrenching emotional core, finding Jim screaming through grief and loss with terrifying conviction. Then comes closer Corporeal, a song so heavy it feels like it’s physically dragging you down into the depths of hell with its devastatingly brutal sludge.

Recorded once again by the ever-brilliant Joe Clayton (Pupil Slicer, Conjurer), this thing sounds monstrous. The guitars buzz with Texas Chain Saw Massacre rage, the rhythm section hits like collapsing scaffolding, and Jim? He’s still one of the most frighteningly human vocalists in the UK underground barking like their aggressive namesake.

For All The Dead Dreams, might not be reinventing the wheel, but it’s another step forward for Mastiff, and a boot through the ribcage of British heavy music. Miserable? Absolutely. Enjoyably so? Undeniably.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Nails, Harm's Way, Gatecreeper

For All The Dead Dreams is out now via Church Road