The events of the last few years have left most of us with a grey tinge in our vision and a sense that nothing will ever really be normal again. A band who knows more about that than most is Mastiff, who have ensured through intense personal struggle and hardship, channelling it into some of the most furious, intense racket this country has ever seen. Deprecipice, their new record, is finally upon us and nothing quite accurately portrays our dismal existence and equally bleak future quite like this slurry of hostility.
As grim, violent and inhospitable as modern living, Deprecipice is a record of grief in every possible form. Grief over lost loved ones, grief over regrets, grief over lost time and grief over a future already condemned. True to the nature of this subject, there’s no light nor optimism to be found here, just obsidian pain and suffering in it’s most abject and authentic form. Yes, as one can imagine this is not an easy listen, and nor is it a particularly what one would call an enjoyable one in the standard sense. But it is a record of genuine substance, one inspired and one immersive in the most violently suffocating way possible. It’s brilliant, albeit totally overwhelming, and a record that demands respect, attention and pundits upon high. With the record out now via MNRK Heavy, we got in touch with vocalist Jim Hodge for a chat.
We’ll start with something straightforward, the album release is right around the corner, the same day as you head out on tour, which begins on the 22nd of March in Hull, with Yersin. Are you more excited for the record to be out or to get back on the road?
“Probably both, it’s a bit of a double edged sword, but we’re waiting for people to start reviewing the record so once they’re in and they’re hopefully good, we can get a bit more excited. As for Yersin, they sort of selected themselves as our support. When we played last year in Newcastle at Trillians, they were on the same wavelength as us. They’re like us, a bunch of cheeky little sods. We got on like a house on fire straight away, we loved their sound and the band.”
And is that how they ended up featuring on the record too?
“Yeah it is, Phil our guitarist said that this track needs divebombs or a solo on, and we felt like that track, which was Worship because it’s pretty much just Slayer worship would be great for him. Rob from Yersin is an absolute nut for Kerry King and I think that definitely comes through”
So, the record itself, sounds absolutely horrible, but in the best way. Having reviewed the record, you might be the first British band to truly sound like END, does that sound accurate, particularly with the more hardcore leanings and influence on the record?
“*Laughs* “Yeah, I’ll take that. It was just natural, what we were listening to and I guess it’s a progression. We write in a live environment, we don’t try to force things and put down anything. It’s kind of, thats the way it sounds and thats what works. Whatever the style or sound of music, we want to put out what we like to hear.”
So when I first discovered you guys a few years ago, my first thoughts were Black Tongue. Then I realised you were from the same place as Black Tongue, Hull…is there something in the water in Hull that breeds this sort of music?”
*Laughs* “Yeah it’s a horrible miserable place. They really are the kings of…whatever they call themselves stylewise. You don’t want to be pigeonholed, I guess they’re blackened noise, I don’t think they’d want the moniker of deathcore. I know them all fairly well…they just sound like themselves and nobody else.”
I guess in the same way they sound like Black Tongue, you guys, well, sound like Mastiff?
“We do try, we always try to be ourselves. We love to Mastiff shit up, and Mastiff our sound up…that’s something we always say as a band.”
“We love to Mastiff shit up!”
Moving onto the record, we’ve touched on Yersin but I want to talk about another feature…the song Cut Throat features Ethan from Primitive Man. It’s an incredibly hard to listen to piece of music, I know that’s kind of Primitive Man’s style but was the track written with that in mind?
“Dan, our bass player wrote that, he’s the mastermind behind this piece. I think, again, he’s thinking of trying to Mastiff a sound up, sort of an industrial thing. He’d written it prior to knowing Ethan was going to have any part of it so originally it was going to be me singing it. He was very open to doing it, even though it wasn’t written for him. He’s absolutely nailed it, making it incredibly hard and uneasy to listen to.”
I think being hard to listen to is a theme that runs across the entire record, there’s themes of trauma, past grief and being unable to overcome past grief, in my view trying to give it a form that will become able to live with. Is that how you view and see the record?
“I guess. I don’t think that grief ever gets better with time, I think that time teaches you to…not ignore it, but deal with it and sort of keep it away from you, that is till the bubble bursts and it overwhelms you again and it peaks. For me, I’m sometimes quite sporadic with my lyrics and when it does peak, I try to use it…to channel it into ideas, to songs. Then kind of fit it around a track and I think that on this record in-particular, there’s a lot of it on here.
Related: Mastiff – Deprecipice | Album Review
A part of the record that I think captures a lot of those feelings is the artwork…you’ve went back to work with TrueSpilledMilk designs…was it just natural to work with him again and does he get you as a band?
“Absolutely, he does get us. We give him the album, he goes away and comes back with an idea. When he did our last record he came back with a few ideas and we made our pick, but with Deprecipice he nailed it first time. We had a rough idea but he took it and ran with it, he’s an incredible artist. We’re lucky to be able to deal with him.”
I mean the image of falling into a never ending void…the desperation, the despair, the unknown…it looks simple at first glance but there’s so much going on, a true testament to his work.
“When people get hold of the physical copies they’ll be able to see it’s true beauty…if that’s the right word, and it’s not just a void, it’s a raging sea around there too. It’s a brilliant piece, it sums up modern life in general I think.”
“That's a hard one. To quote a certain Mr Lars Ulrich..."FUUUUCK”
Let’s take things a little bit lighter, you’ve put out probably one of the best music videos of recent times for the track ‘Serrated’, featuring Harry from Burner but there’s also a few little cameos from the British music scene in there. How did this all come about and why the choice to make a music video the polar opposite to what the song sounds like?
“If anybody knows us, we try to be as fun as we can be doing this horrible music. It takes everything out of us, misery wise, writing and recording. When we come to it, we’re a tongue in cheek band and we don’t want to be in a blacked out room with blood dripping from the ceiling…nothing wrong with that of course! It was our guitarist, Phil who came up with the idea, it was let’s go stupid. Our label were thankfully open to it and let us do what we want. The bar bill was pretty heavy that day!”
Was the bingo jacket in the video…you know the one, was it provided for Harry or was it out of his own wardrobe?
“We bought it for him, but I think he has it now! He wears it really well.”
When I first saw the video it reminded me of Ruin by Lamb of God, with the church and people thinking it’s going to be a religious band…it’s the whole fish out of water concept and I imagine in your early days you’ve probably played a few social clubs where people have no idea what’s happening.
“We have, I think most bands in Britain have…but we’ve never played this one. It’s actually in the next village over from me, I used to be a regular there so we kind of knew what we were letting ourselves and them in for. You’ll see an older couple sat just infront of the stage playing Bingo…that’s actually my Mum and Dad! So it was a real family affair and just a great day that I think made a pretty good video!
We’ve mentioned Harry who isn’t just in the video but guests on the track but Smittens from Calligram also makes an appearance too. Those are two bands who are part of perhaps the most creatively vital the British Music scene has been in years. How do you view yourselves within that scene?
“*Chuckles* We don’t! We’re very self-depricating, we’re not ones to believe our own bullshit, we’re just grateful to be here, to play with and tour with these bands. There’s so many of them and we’re friends with them all, it’s just so great to see them getting out there.”
Oh I wouldn’t sell yourselves short. Last year Burner blew everyone away and I think you guys will this year, if there’s any justice then it’ll be the people who normally gravitate to stuff like END, Trap Them and Primitive Man will find a lot to love on this record.
“Here’s hoping, that’s all you can do. We think it will but you have to see about these things”
Finally…with the album coming out, do you have any goals in mind for it’s cycle? Such as places to tour, hoping to take things to another level?
“Obviously we would love to, we’ve got to wait for it to get out into the world properly and the right people to hear it. There’s so many shit-hot bands releasing music at the same time as us and we’re fighting for the same space. We’ll do anything we can gig wise, and we always feel lucky to do this. We’re sort of tied because we do have jobs, Phil is a teacher so that does limit us. We don’t really like playing as a 4 piece, we want people to feel the full force, the full destruction of Mastiff”.
Right…to finish things off, would you mind summing up Deprecipice in one word?
“That’s a hard one. To quote a certain Mr Lars Ulrich…”FUUUUCK”