Germans MNHG are a new band –starting in the plague year 2020 and playing an old style of filth ridden Black and Roll. Fans of Sarke are gonna wanna swim in the cesspool of this quartet.
By now it seems repetitive to describe Black and Roll but for the uninitiated if you take the rock and roll drive or Motorhead, the balls to the wall grass roots of Venom and mix it up with mid to late era Darkthrone and Age of Nero Satyricon you get the micro genre that MNHG identify with. This is music that you can stand in a cemetery covered in corpse paint whilst chugging a beer, with your foot up on a gravestone playing airbass between mouthfuls.
Three of the members were previously in Blackened pagan merchants Thyrgrim and have hitched their wagon to a new motor wagon with a new drummer with Mundare.
What you get for your hard-earned Euros or pounds is 11 tracks of pounding high octane dark rockin’ tunes about naughty doings. Babylon the Whore, Reborn in Suffering, Blasphemic Warfare. It is all good cheesy fun. The riffs are basic but catchy like Covid and the vocals will have people squeezing invisible oranges for days. It reminds me a little of Abbath’s I project which of course comes from his love of all things Lemmy and like both the great Lemster and the Norwegian there is good use of melody here with Praise the Beast having a punky edge to it and a great pummelling drum beat that gets the toes tapping and blood pumping.
The trouble with Black and Roll is it can feel a little one dimensional when consumed in large quantities. This album, whilst filled with rock and roll exuberance and horn flicking moments lacks nuance and subtleties that could give rise to longevity for a listener. I think 12 songs is far too long (one is an intro pedants) for an album of this nature. I would want a short blast of 7 tracks. This is something to put on whilst getting ready for a night out or to blast out a couple of tracks as you are driving towards Wacken or Hellfest looking forward to that first beer in the sun.
It will be interesting if we ever get to see MNHG live to see what they have to offer in the flesh. I hope that they can maintain the punky attitude which pokes through here on a stage.
This is a band to keep an eye on and definitely add to your mixtapes for drunken barbecues this summer.
(6.5/10 Matt Mason)
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