The Glory Bitches of Doghead

Mistress first began as a sludge act akin to Eyehategod and Iron Monkey, however with their own orginal twist, inserting the kinds of ferocious grinding passages that would make Napalm Death proud, into the songs. Their second album raised the bar for ferocity and added a touch more grind to the mix (the production also put less emphasis on the downtuning on this album), and with classic songs as "Rat Piss" and "Piss for Blood, Shit for Brains", it was an album to be reckoned with. Two years they released their highly acclaimed "In Disgust we Trust", which was more along the lines beer swilling heavy metal albeit still with their trademark grind and occaisionally sludgy moments.


After poor record sales (which is surprising due to the amount of critical acclaim "In disgust..." recieved, and the fact that they appeared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks on the 2005 Christmas special), they were dropped from the Earache roster the week they went into the studio to record this album. They were at something of a loss in terms of what to do. Regardless, they churned on, playing live shows with a reinvigorated rage, and as the year went on, more new songs began to surface until they announced the release date for their new album (after a year and a half of waiting on my part).


So here I am, listening to their new album, and what can I say? The score adequately shows what I think of this album. What I can say is, that this is brutality with depth. They have pretty much dropped the early sludge sound in favour of making the grindcore element the most prominant. Of course there are some sludge passages, which is unsurprising due to their roots as a band, but even so, most of these slower sections sound more akin to down tempo grindcore. There is also an incredible amount of depth to this album, which is somewhat surprising to hear, when considering that this is a grindcore album. There are some all out, balls-to-the-wall moments ("Cheyne Stoking" and "Kunt" amongst others!), but it never seems to be extremity for the sake of itself; everything seems thought out, in fact there's even a considerable amount of understated melody in most of the songs, and even a relaxing clean guitar interlude "Sleep", which, trust me, will jump out and shock you more than their violent songs! It's very like the much needed morphine to the open wound created by the first half of the album.


The instruments are well played, and the songs are satisfyingly structured , something that a considerable amount of bands seem to have trouble with. Of course this isn't ludicrously technical, in fact it's a relatively accessible album as far as the song writing goes: there are no sudden time signature changes, there are no ludicrously complicated or unlistenably dissonant riffs and they're not out to show off how well they can play. No; they've just simply written an awesome rock album. The Guitar tone is absolutely perfect for this kind of music; the riffs sound like well tuned chainsaws cutting at you from the speakers; and needless to say, it's extremely satisfying. In terms of the production, this has Mick Kenney written all over it, it's raw but everything is still audible and fits together. Although many people may find the raw production difficult to sit through; but even so, I certainly cannot deny that it compliments the music perfectly.


This is by far Mistress' best album, their 'grinding achievement' or 'grind opus', you could say...that is if you wanted to start describing everything with stupid puns. This is an amazing album; it has the right balance between old and new, and importantly, the elements of musical progression that are necessary for a band to keep their music from becoming boring and stale.

Rather than manipulating your opinions as to which songs are the best, I'll just sit back and let you do that for yourself so go on, let Mistress violate you...it may be more pleasant than you think!