Two people: Hanno Klänhardt on guitar and vocals, Erinc Sakarya on drums. Between them they make a noise that sounds like significantly more than two people, a Hamburg-via-Frankfurt duo who have been fusing black metal, sludge, and punk into something genuinely their own since 2013. Post-Apocalyptic Depression is their fifth full-length, and the title functions as both description and forecast.
“Absolute Ghost” opens without preamble, a riff that arrives immediately and goes where it’s going without asking for your readiness. Klänhardt’s guitar tone sits in the space between black metal’s trebly bite and sludge’s low-end saturation, which is exactly where Mantar live: too raw for metal’s production values, too musical for noise, too heavy for punk. “Rex Perverso” is the album’s most explicitly political track, which in Mantar’s hands means the politics come through the guitar rather than around it, the riff is the argument, and it’s not a subtle one.
“Halsgericht” closes the record with the band’s nod to their German heritage: the word refers to a historical tribunal that carried the death penalty, and the track earns the reference with six minutes of controlled fury that builds to the album’s most complete moment. The fact that it’s also the most melodic track on the record is very Mantar, they’ve always had a sharper ear for hooks than their aesthetic suggests.
Thin and mean where most heavy records are thick and considered, the guitar tone prioritizes attack over sustain, the drums are close and physical without being overproduced. This is garage-level recording in the best sense: everything sounds like it’s happening in a room, with the room’s roughness intact. Hanno’s guitar does all the tonal work a guitar and bass section would normally share, which gives the mix its particular quality, sparse on the low end but dense in the mid-range, where most of the sonic action happens.
Standout tracks: Rex Perverso, Absolute Ghost, Halsgericht
Mantar have refined their approach to the point where it sounds effortless, which is the opposite of what it is. Post-Apocalyptic Depression is a record made by two people who have figured out exactly how much damage they can do with exactly this much equipment. The answer is: enough.
