Typical. You wait for months… well, years really… for a great local band to come along and then, like the proverbial bus, you get two of the buggers. Following on from our review of the excellent Temple of Lies release, we were contacted by Mage, a band of similar disposition (i.e. dry as a bone stoner riffs, vocals on the right side of Hetfield) whose work once again serves as a stout rebuff to anybody who believes that local scenes don’t throw up great bands.
As with Temple of Lies, what strikes home first is the effort and care that has gone into every detail. Packaged in a handsome digi-pack the disc looks every inch the professional release before you even get to the disc itself. Insert the little fella into your player, however, and it is the production that will leave you picking your bruised jaw up from the floor. This little beast is heavy and the production job (produced, engineered and mixed by the enigmatic ‘Boulty’ at Stuck on a name studios in Nottingham) does the band’s bottom-heavy work outs full justice with a stripped down mix that allows each instrument plenty of space to breathe and shine. Songs such as ‘cosmic cruiser X’ which is a mixture of Kyuss and Load-era Metallica benefit immensely from this devilishly simple approach whilst the band take every opportunity to add instrumental flourishes that raise this above the realms of the ordinary (check out the subtle bass runs that sit behind the crushing guitar drones on the first track for example), while Tom’s vocals capture that raw-throated power and rugged tunefulness that you want form this style of music. ‘Degenerate’ is a more full-on effort, the riffs churning like tyres spinning in glutinous mud, and if you don’t bang your head involuntarily then you may well want to think about chucking the disc and heading off to whatever nonsense Simon Cowell’s lot are dealing in because metal is clearly not for you. ‘Rust’ ups the ante one step further for a full-on thrash attack that wouldn’t sound out of place on an early Metallica record, although the bass-heavy production does hamper the delivery of the fastest riffs a touch. However, once the track settles into its viscous groove, it transpires to be just one of the record’s many highlights.
Having done much to impress in the early stages of the disc, ‘Danse macabre’ keeps the momentum by locking on to a brutal groove and using it like a cosh to batter the listener into submission. It’s as brutal and vital as you could wish for and then ‘star born’ kicks off with it awkward, syncopated beat keeping you on your toes. ‘Drowning doom’ is, as you might expect from the title, a sludge-fest of epic proportions, offset by the cleverly doubled vocals which rise to the surface with power and authority despite the barrage they have to compete with. ‘Surfing temporal tides’ does much for the flow of the album by lightening the almost unbearably oppressive gloom with a much lighter stoner riff – it’s another highlight and if you want to check out only one song to find out why we love Mage, this possibly should be it. Further benefitting the light and shade introduced into the album, ‘Witch of the black desert’ opens with just bass and vocals before the guitars kick back in on the back of a blazing riff and that’s before the supercharged outro does its job of destroying your senses altogether. ‘Super supremacy’ is a furious juggernaut of chugging riffs and vocals straight out of Kyuss. It is one of the heaviest tracks in evidence and you can only imagine how brutal it must be live. The finale, ‘Hulk Out’ does a grand job of living up to its name whilst the lyric “truly a monster to behold” must surely be the unofficial tag line of the record.
The whole album clocks in at just under forty minutes and yet so dark are the clouds that gather during the mind blowing riffs that you’d be forgiven for thinking it longer. It’s a monumental achievement that the album, despite being entirely independent, sounds and looks so professional and it’s clear that this is the result of a group of musicians working (at the risk of sounding like a trailer for a Hollywood war movie) not for money or fame but for the love of crafting something that excites them first and foremost. With Mage’s music freely available on bandcamp (and streaming below) there really is no excuse not to check them out – currently one of the UK’s best kept secrets Mage are awesome.
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