Album Review: Mental Cavity - Neuro Siege

Featuring a couple of members of Canberra sludge/hardcore kings I Exist (other personnel from said band also make guest appearances), Mental Cavity have inherited that outfit's worship of the almighty riff, while also having a penchant for unbridled speed and brutality.

Their first album was akin to Remission-era Mastodon jamming on Slayer and Entombed covers with Matt Pike, before rehearsal finished and everyone partied while blasting the Eyehategod catalogue. The follow-up channels some similar influences (the rollicking title track is Motörhead on steroids), but also welcomely offers greater variety than their debut.

The record infuses black-metal touches and death-metal riffage alongside the thrash (the Kerry King-esque shredding on Infiltrators) and weighty sludge (ominous, lumbering Spoiled) elements. It's a satisfying melting pot of extreme sounds, bridging the worlds of Morbid Angel and Crowbar, that somehow avoids going completely off the rails. The two-pronged vocal approach (the death/grind-style attack is particularly ferocious) proves more scathing than the reviews of Fred Durst's directorial efforts, and is an appropriate foil for the intensity maintained throughout.

Neuro Siege's bludgeoning is all over in little more than half an hour, but it's a headkicking you'll keep coming back to. For a truly relentless album to cap off 2019, look no further.