Man Must Die – The Human Condition
Posted by douchemike on July 9th, 2008 filed in Death Metal, Heavy Metal
In the United Kingdom, there’s a two-tier extreme metal scene – The ‘normal’ one and the ‘scene’ one. The two fanbases rarely cross over, mostly because the normal one is based on how good you are and the ‘scene’ one on how pretty your tshirt designs and members are and how many friends you have on Myspace. Man Must Die are part of the former scene and have, ironically, had more success on continental Europe than in their home country, as support slots on most UK metal tours are taken by the scene bands. The logic being, “Why have 150 on the door for Suffocation if you can have 250, even though 100 of them will fuck off after the support bands as they’ve never heard of Suffocation, don’t like their haircuts much and anyway, it’s a school night”.
The stand out track on ‘The Human Condition’, ‘March of the Clones’ deals with this subject with vitriolic lyrics: ‘Over saturated / With the clone design / Take what’s mine, make it yours / To make a profit you fucking whores’, and while these couplets aren’t exactly Shakespeare it’s great to have a death metal band with lyrics that are actually relevant to modern life in the United Kingdom, especially since the nether-regions of our country are more than scary than most Cannibal Corpse songs. On ‘Waster’ the great Scottish stereotype of ‘neds’ is tackled with the lines ‘Stop sitting with your hand out / No responsibility / You claim poverty every fucking day / Fear, all I see is fucking fear’. Vocalist Joe McGlynn’s vocal style is audible for the majority of the record’s duration while remaining a master class in death metal vocals. It’s a pleasure to have some discernible extreme metal vocals that don’t make you cringe when you work out what the lyrics are.
Musically, Man Must Die have taken the melodic ferocity that Chuck Schuldiner made his own and fused it to both the chaotic nastiness of ‘None So Vile’ era Cryptopsy and the brutal groove of slam death metal. ‘The Human Condition’ could fit into both the technical and brutal death metal camps effortlessly, and the album contains such a range of approaches that there are melodic (think mid-period Death rather than Gothenburg) and progressive moments as well. It is a great feat that the anarchic time sequences at the beginning of ‘March of the Clones’ feature on the same album as the anthem-like, NWOBHM-influenced build up and crescendo in the anti-war polemic ‘Past the Point’. The drumming of former Regorge drummer John Lee is a technical revelation, with his performance on ‘Elitist’ a particular standout. In conclusion, this record is well worth checking out if you are a fan of Death, Cryptopsy, Dying Fetus or Kataklysm.
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