Band's List Death Metal Menschenfresser Moorgott

Not that many bands can claim they belong to the confined genre of Horror Metal. There are the US legends Necrophagia or Danish purveyors of extravaganza Denial Of God and also a good bunch of Italian bands, but it’s not like you could name 20 names or so out of the blue whereas you’d have no problem at all with dropnaming Pagan Black Metal bands or something a bit more popular. So when a band comes forward saying: “Hey, we play Horror Metal”, the least you can do is bow down and feel enthusiastic about the whole thing because once a Horror Metal fan always a Horror Metal fan.

And that’s just how Menschenfresser from Germany define their sound. I’ll have to admit I’m not that good at reading German and the whole bio and stuff printed in German didn’t help me that much though I could decipher that like many other bands, they had their shares of line-up issues before they could eventually release their debut entitled Moorgott.

We all know that Horror Metal is not exactly the most sought after genre in Metal and chances are some of you have never even heard of it. For those of you still waiting for unholy baptism, let’s just say that the genre is musically quite open, ranging from Heavy Metal bands to Black Metal bands but what really sets a band as a Horror Metal band is the members' unconditional love for cheesy old horror flicks (anything beyond the 80s is unacceptable), horror-like atmospheres created by cheesy (and yet awesome!) keys and/or movie samples from anything released by Hammer, weird witches voices that appear out of nowhere, etc. You probably get the picture by now.

Menschenfresser do have most of these elements and would rather be qualified as a Horror Death Metal band just like Necrophagia with whom they share their love for catchy choruses and straight in your face efficient riffing. What Menschenfresser do better than most other bands out there is that they haven't given up on their mother tongue and do sing in German (which makes me think I’d love Abysmal Grief to release something in Italian!). The Death Metal growls are very much intelligible and it adds something excellent. Now we all know that since Rammstein, German language is not as harsh as we may think and it's a rather musical language that blends perfectly with metal anthems.

Most of the songs are great and really entertaining, some punchier than others (Hunger or Das Etwas) some leaning more on ambiances (Untot or the eponymous track Moorgott) and it’s all mixed, if not perfectly, at least very decently for a self-release record. To add some more body to their songs, Menschenfresser could rely a little bit more on Horror than on pure catchiness but their take is fine as it is, except they still have some room for improvement. There are fans out there for this relatively discrete and quiet genre and they’ll be pleased to know that one more band joined their ranks!

All Hails Menschenfresser!