Review Summary: YOUR WORLD IS SHAKING, AND WE'RE ALL STARING
Come & See has Mamaleek, for all intents and purposes, abandoning the industrial/folk-tinged derangement of their black metal past and instead turning towards something just as amorphous and out of left field, something just as likely to dip its tendrils into Muddy Waters as it is to My War and the clanging misanthropy of all Albini’s friends and descendants, a cross-pollination of blues, jazz and noise-rock, along with their own bent for experimental speculation that’s all raw, raw, raw, bloody and ramshackle. Mamaleek have very clearly chosen their new direction well, as their artistically-minded brand of misanthropy gives way to a sludged-out, crazed mania. How much, I wondered to myself, how much is this Mamaleek’s answer to Oxbow, answer unknown, but the fever dream atmosphere, the evil heat, if you will, of the whole thing, those qualities of jazz and blues that speak to a frenzied, murderous Dionysian abandon, well, it’s hard not to draw the parallel. And that abandon is so aptly and so bitterly reflected in the artwork, that soulless empty-eyed structure, that Chicago hell, that abattoir of human dignity that is Cabrini Green overshadowed by an anonymous, looming figure. Woo, hell. Hell.
So if we were to draw out this otherwise favorable comparison, while Mamaleek’s anonymous vocalist is no Eugene Robinson (who is? Eugene stands alone), his malevolent spitting of vile invective still slaps the teeth out of any ray of light that the music might be tempted allow into the room. And while Mamleek’s anonymous guitarist is no Grant Green (haha as if Grant Green would ever let himself near this thing) his forays into blues solos and jazzed up chords more than serve their purpose, dragging that fecund murk into view, that roiling, seething underbelly that is churning deep in the roots those styles, all the death, all the wild-eyed frenzy, all the gazing up from the squalor and mud and absolutely
seething with life refusing to be strangled in the crib. And while Mamaleek’s other anonymous members are no other members than the members of Mamaleek on this album, they are certainly no less than the other members of Mamaleek, especially since the band is just the two guys.
But where doesn’t it work? There are places: the post-metal-esque roaring here and there just doesn’t have the force of the more unhinged howls, growls and yowls, and paired with those god-damned tremolo climaxes on Elsewhere had me doubting the integrity of the whole thing, but then, oh glory, the horn came in, blaring, blaring across those fucked dissonant little chords, and the whole thing was salvaged, or perhaps scuttled, as conventionality collapsed into something so much more fucking real. And Mamaleek don’t always give in to the sketchy, oppressive atmosphere they’re pretty adept at conjuring; they’re rarely as plunged into the feverish nightmare world as the band I keep wanting to compare this to, except perhaps on Street Nurse, which sees them dressing in the full regalia of fucked blues-metal as the singer vomits pure bile across a mangled blues lick. Does it occasionally fall prey to noodling and moments of aimlessness, moments where Mamaleek’s toothy maw seems on the verge of coming loose? Sure, and that is perhaps the greatest sin of the album as a whole. But when it hits, it hits with the force of a captive bolt pistol to the forehead, a sudden and violent tunneling into the psyche.
And we come to the sidewinder-bitten, thirst-mad stumble through the blazing sun that is We Hang Because We Must, all the delirium and frenzy drawing to a peak, and then to a close, a well-earned respite from all the relentless misanthropy. And if it ain’t perfect, if maybe those minutes that build to the next burst of collapsing savagery feel a little toothless or superfluous, it’s not hard to let go in the face of the fury being vomited out by this duo of misanthropes, a fury that is rarely matched and even more rarely exceeded.
