REVIEW ROUND-UP: Mushroomhead, Millie Manders And The Shutup, Barbarian Hermit

Mushroomhead

Call The Devil

This is exactly what we all wanted, right, guys? Not just a new Mushroomhead album in this big year of 2024, but one that’s an hour long with the same old greasy, putrid nu-metal stench yet to be done away with? God, it’s like Christmas… Dunno, maybe it’s just too much to expect a 30-year-old band to have their act together. This band, certainly, whose greatest pop culture contribution was some ill-defined beef with Slipknot for both being multi-legged, mask-wearing metal bands. And even if Slipknot themselves aren’t in the best of shape on record nowadays, theirs isn’t a position so weak that Mushroomhead can simply swoop in and usurp it. On their best days, they’re not that capable.

Good luck deducing what a ‘best day’ for Mushroomhead actually is, mind, ‘cause Call The Devil won’t give you much to work with. This is the slow, unsatisfying lumber of a band past their prime and dangerously low on ideas, let alone good ones. Across its utterly ludicrous runtime, Mushroomhead make finding key points that work in their favour a real chore, where you’re left to sift through the thudding clunks and clanks of a band carrying the obvious weight of nine members. Percussion especially hammers itself down and hems all momentum to feel even slower and longer. Add onto that the monotony that sets in rather quickly—to say nothing of how excruciatingly overdrawn Shame In A Basket is, all eight-and-a-half minutes of it!—and the slog of Call The Devil really does feel endless. The end does come, mercifully, though not before Doom Goose as a cinematic fragment peppered with occasional honks, Mushroomhead’s presumed idea of a ‘joke’ that’s just a different breed of waste of time.

It rarely improves, even in the scant instances of Mushroomhead not trotting out a fossilised approximation of nu-metal. The most significant advancement towards something good is Prepackaged, in what feels like the tangible update in heaviness and low-end that most of Call The Devil doesn’t have. It’s also a qualitative outlier, next to shockingly canned attempts at theatricality on Emptiness and Decomposition, or Grand Gesture which is too slovenly for what its ballad-like swell is trying to reach. As the incongruous bits of circus music on UIOP (A Final Reprieve) and Decomposition infer, successfully doing more is not Mushroomhead’s forte, and for a band who seem to have a whole new lineup with every release, that’s not a good thing. They’re caught between a lack of new ideas that are any good, and the immobile lummox of a default that barely allows for more anyway.

Maybe it’s not precisely new for them, but that’s no reason to just accept it. Doing so just highlights how Mushroomhead have nothing going for them outside of baffling inertia. It’s frankly a mystery how they’ve lasted this long with music so dull and devoid of impetus to pick itself up. Moreover, what is there to care about on Call The Devil when Mushroomhead simply refuse to do anything? Forget standing in a positive light; here, they’re still slumming it in the dilapidated backwoods you’d expect to house the outdated nu-metal also-rans. The song We Don’t Care sums it up best with its very title; the feeling is mutual.

For fans of: Mudvayne, Spineshank, American Head Charge

‘Call The Devil’ by Mushroomhead is released on 9th August on Napalm Records.

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Millie Manders And The Shutup

Wake Up, Shut Up, Work

Unless you’re a regular patron of the more Rebellion-esque punk circles (or even an oldhead who goes to Slam Dunk once in a while), you’ll likely be ignorant to Millie Manders’ name and the near-decade of graft behind it. To be fair, it’s not a scene that tends to get most attention beyond its walls, and when another proprietor from a similar generation is the proudly repugnant transphobe Louise Distras, you can’t blame people for staying at arm’s length. As for Manders—and her band The Shutup, retroactively credited onto all her past solo releases—there are strong enough instincts for genuine punk that she isn’t one to be similarly tarred. In a genre branch whose progressivism tends to be more broad and blanketed nowadays, there’s a couple of notable barbs sticking out on this one.

Still, they’re more the exception on Wake Up, Shut Up, Work. Manders’ output being attuned to an older, less radicalised audience leaves that inevitable, where more pop-centric or ‘conventional’ ideas rise to the top. It’s a good thing she knows how to sell them, then, with a clearer voice and better technical singing skills that are more form-fitting for relationship turbulence on R.I.P or Halloween. It’s just as much pure pop-rock in that sense, the gyre widened by a song like Can I Get Off? as a shockingly comprehensive rebuttal to those who’ll willfully misinterpret the genocide in Palestine, and the so-called ‘political’ bands keeping conspicuously shtum on the matter. It’s a hell of a swerve for the album’s penultimate song, but a welcome one to showcase how fundamental punk ethics remain in Manders’ DNA.

It’s also useful to anchor down what’s otherwise a very accessible, almost radio-ready album. In a past life, songs like Fun Sponge and One That Got Away could’ve potentially enjoyed some crossover attention, as punchy and horn-assisted in the vein of The Selecter as they are. In every musical and compositional sense, the tones are lighter and more buoyant, another instance of old-timey punk as Manders’ clear bread-and-butter. Strip back some of the shinier production layers and it wouldn’t seem too far-fetched to slot among a very specific era of punk and ska. It might also be what contributes to a bit of thinness in style, but there’s enough bounce and exuberance from Manders alone to keep moving. Besides, it’s not uncommon from acts this rooted in the past; Manders is no worse off from it than anyone else.

Maybe there’s not the most resilient staying power in the world outside of far-and-away highlights, but isn’t that true of this era of punk as a whole? Not every band or album will be a classic, and Manders clearly takes that in stride to deliver something front-to-back solid should be the ideal way to go. With how largely untaxing it is, there’s no reason not to give Wake Up, Shut Up, Work a go; an album not looking to upend the paradigm of punk for a change is actually a nice palette-cleanser. The fact it gets there without feeling spectacularly outshined by everything around it is even better.

For fans of: The Bar Stool Preachers, Grade 2, The Selecter

‘Wake Up, Shut Up, Work’ by Millie Manders And The Shutup is released on 2nd August.

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Barbarian Hermit

Mean Sugar

When Barbarian Hermit released Solitude And Savagery in 2018, it came at what seemed like the start of a sludgy little renaissance. That never really panned out, truth be told, but it’s good that those working towards it weren’t dragged under with it. Even if six years is a little longer than preferred for a proper follow-up (the EP remaster in 2021 doesn’t really count, does it?), the tangible evidence of Barbarian Hermit not just stewing and stagnating is all over Mean Sugar. As a matter of fact, in the interim, they’ve almost fully Mastodonned themselves.

By which we mean they’ve made their sludge-metal template leaner and firmer at its core. If you fancy being exceptionally charitable, it can almost slot in as the missing link between Crack The Skye and The Hunter—not so refined yet that it’s borderline (or sometimes, even outright) radio-friendly in its hooks, but also a few steps away from the big, proggy sprawls. Even if that’s not immediately obvious, the earworms are insidious enough to where it sticks. There are moments of quicker, rattling weight thrown around on Who Put 50p In You? that are really strong, as are the protruding bass twangs and deepened, sonorous backing vocals on Kick Up The Dust. They show a willingness to bend that sludge-metal often lacks, and brings about its notorious homogeneity when it does.

And yeah, Barbarian Hermit themselves aren’t out of those particular woods just yet, either. The majority of Mean Sugar still owes a lot to those core ideals, though it’s encouraging how tighter structure and composition is still chiefly at play. When it does branch out that bit further, it’s only on the closer Heal The Tyrant as a clearly-defined climax that’s earned its seven-and-a-half minutes. Elsewhere, the characteristics of sludge-metal are blatantly at play, and well acclimated to Mean Sugar’s tighter runtimes. Not like there was ever a danger of inhumanly fat riffs, bass and angry-rhino gutturals not working, but y’know…it’s always good to be sure. Indeed, as an album designed to embody both the bleakness of northern England but also the invigoration at its heart, the juxtapositions on Mean Sugar find themselves coming to life to an even greater extent. When there’s almost a little brightness that pokes out through Stitched Up, it’s as tightly woven as that notion gets.

On the other hand, though, if you take Mean Sugar completely at face value as just another slab of impenetrable sludge to get pulled in by, that’s perfectly valid too. Those Mastodon comparisons earlier were mostly around aesthetics, anyway; anything overly conceptual or cerebral doesn’t have to exist in this space. And that feels about right for Barbarian Hermit, a band who continue to stretch their legs within their corner of the metal world, and get enough exercise from it to suit what they’re after. It just so happens that this particular workout has yielded a couple of added benefits compared to the last, which is just a win all round.

For fans of: Mastodon, Baroness, Boss Keloid

‘Mean Sugar’ by Barbarian Hermit is released on 2nd August on APF Records.

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Words by Luke Nuttall