Band:	Mastiff
Album:	Deprecipice
Style:	Hardcore, Sludge metal
Release date:	March 2024

01. Bite Radius
02. Everything Is Ending
03. Void
04. Cut-Throat
05. Skin Stripper
06. Serrated
07. Worship
08. Pitiful
09. The Shape
10. Thorn Trauma

‘Short but sweet’ isn’t really applicable to Deprecipice, as there’s little sweet about it, but this is a brief and belligerent rampage of hardcore-infused sludge.

Brevity is a consistent feature of Mastiff’s output; across what is now 4 full albums, not one of them runs beyond 35 minutes. It’s an understandable approach, though, as music as aggressive and mirthless as this is most potent in small doses, and Deprecipice is certainly mirthless. The album is inspired by grief, pain and depression in the wake of personal tragedies, and that despondency bleeds through into the bleakness of Deprecipice.

Vocalist Jim Hodge has stated that, in contrast to 2021’s Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth, the album’s sound has shifted away from death metal and towards hardcore. This is a fair summation of the key difference between the two records, although hardcore was very much present on the last album, and death metal does still linger here in certain moments. Both genres sit alongside sludge, arguably the dominant sound in Mastiff’s musical mixture, and a couple of other styles make their presence felt on occasion too.

Another way in which these two albums differ is in how they begin; while Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth opened with a lengthy quiet slow burner of a song, Deprecipice lurches immediately into vicious metallic churn. Those hardcore stylings make themselves felt early on; “Bite Radius” has a nasty low-end guitar tone, violent blast beats and rampant roaring vocals, but the verses power along propelled by frenetic punky beats. There’s also a slower, dirgier midsection with some surprisingly melodic guitar leads, proving that Mastiff offer more than just straight violence, and the track ends with stomping, gnarly sludge.

Other sounds encountered across the album’s 35 minutes include a return of old school death metal riffing at the beginning of “Everything Is Ending” and “Serrated” (the latter featuring quite an exuberant solo to boot), the noisy distorted industrial churn of “Cut Throat”, the mid-tempo groove of “Worship”, and the droning noise of late-album interlude “The Shape”. In terms of standout moments on Deprecipice, I am most taken with the nasty breakdowns later in “Everything Is Ending”, the crushing sludgy trudging of “Void”, and a further reprise of hooky melodic guitar leads on closer “Thorn Trauma”.

Despite its compact 35-minute runtime, there are moments when the album does lose a bit of its grip on the listener. Most notably for me, the album’s longest song, “Pitiful”, is a bit of a flat trudger for the first couple of minutes; it eventually springs to life, but the opening riff has worn out its welcome by that point. Still, overall, it’s another solid effort from on of the UK’s most noteworthy sludge artists.