MANITCORE
‘For Rats and Plague’
Deathgasm Records

- Review by Shane

Akron Ohio’s MANTICORE specialize in a dark art that is very common in underground Metal, a sound that blurs the line between Black and Death Metal, although they lean more to the latter as you will read. They are promoted in the bio sheet as black metal, they are wearing corpsepaint in the pics in the CD booklet, and the overall layout, in black and white with plenty of inverted crosses and pentagrams, is very black metal image oriented.

But upon listening to this 30 minute smack upside the head, I hear more death metal than anything, a bass heavy production of grinding/thrashing guitars, growling vocals, and prevalent, reverb heavy drums is what you get here. A vintage black metal sound ( remember when Venom and Mercyful Fate were considered black metal?! ) via a few higher registered vocal passages and some riffing that sounds like a swarm of demonic bee’s pops up throughout the album. The lone guitar solo is during the last track ‘Bleeding the Leeches’. Some scary keys are a nice touch to track 8 ‘Rise of the Black Moon’. A few sludgy, doom-laden parts breakup the album nicely. Overall, a very solid, filthy, underground Metal offering.

Manticore’s My Space

Read all of Shane’s Music Reviews in our Music section.