Great news for misery lovers: Mastiff are back.
After the high point of 2024 LP Deprecipice, turning personal grief and post-pandemic malaise into a barrage of misanthropic sludge and hardcore hooks, Hull’s premier feel-bad five-piece could have taken a well-earned break. But they’re already back with a new 5-track EP For All The Dead Dreams, their first on UK indie label Church Road Records.
The two singles ‘Decimated Graves’ and ‘A Story Behind Every Light’ showcase the band at full-tilt, with the EP, as a whole, taking their brand of hardcore-infused sludge and incorporating more death metal tones and tempos. Of ‘A Story Behind Every Light’, Mastiff say that “Sonically we were channeling the kind of driving death metal that bands like Gatecreeper do so well, but being us we also threw a couple of skronky meat-head breakdowns in there too”.
The lyrics are as dark as ever – wrestling with personal suffering as well as disempowerment and despair about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the generally bleak state of the world – but the boxer on the sleeve art, beaten down but unbroken, better captures the band’s defiant spirit in the face of adversity. Not to mention that, with UK indie music venues under constant pressure and simply being alive in 2025 now laughably expensive, ploughing on as a DIY band in a niche genre takes a certain kind of bloody-mindedness. Luckily for heavy music fans, Mastiff have it in spades.
The band has always favoured a quick recording process to capture the ferocious live energy they’re renowned for on the DIY and festival circuit, and producer Joe Clayton brings their raw full sound to life (As an aside, having a cover design by True Spilt Milk and Clayton behind the desk is becoming a reliable seal of quality for England’s finest post-metal, sludge and heavy music.)
After 12 years together, 10 releases and regular touring, Mastiff’s song-writing instincts are unsurprisingly honed to a knife-edge. End result: their new EP hasn’t a moment of fluff or filler; it grabs you by the scruff, and shakes you like a chew-toy for 15 gloriously miserable minutes.
