Album Review: Mental Cavity - "Mass Rebel Infest" 8/10 (Death/Hardcore)

Mental Cavity – Mass Rebel Infest
Death/Hardcore crossover from NSW, Australia
Released June 25th, 2021
Via Creator-Destructor Records
8/10

Mental Cavity landed firmly on my radar in 2019 with Neuro Siege and whenever I hear their music I just want to be in a room full of people beating the shit out of each other. Like repeatedly punching each other in the fucking head and shit. Mass Rebel Infest continues the stoking of my bloodlust.

Spotify

In my opinion, the only way to make death metal even heavier is to load it up with crusty down beat hardcore jams and that’s exactly what we have here. A stirring duet of death riffs and hardcore violence. The vocals have a good variety in this respect as well going between thrashier punk growls and death grind spewing. Probably because everyone in the band besides the drummer contributes vocals. But you know, the drummer is pretty busy on here setting the pace of our self-destruction, this punk shit is just as fast as the metal shit don’t you know?

Mass Rebel Infest is the band continuing to one up themselves in terms of quality, further refining their ability to be addictive and heavy as fuck. It’s a constantly moving state of hectic genres switching between bludgeoning you with a fist and just fucking stabbing you. This album sounds like a crime to listen to, as if listening to it jumps you into some kind of violent gang or occult ritual. Don’t listen to this album when you first wake up, this isn’t coffee, it’s meth and you’ll end up in prison by midday after having a mid-errand confrontation.

A real barn burner, a real hoot. How many paragraphs do you really need in a review when you should so obviously listen to this album? It’s like going in for dental surgery but the dentist also “dabbles” in brain surgery. When you think about combining death and hardcore you’re probably thinking of something super modern but tracks like “Downtrodden” and “Apparite” really bring to attention to the old school death thrash side of the band with some traditional solo work and a blackened speed metal pacing.

It’s as crushing as it is grooving with so many noteworthy moments that will surely put this in daily rotation for any death metal fan. Normally, I’m having to defend metal bands with hardcore stylings to the metal community but this time around I feel like it’s the opposite where metalheads will eat this up and many modern hardcore fans might not even recognise the hardcore in it! For me, it was a more than welcome respite from the technical death metal onslaught we get here at Noob Heavy.

Mental Cavity make straight up hostile jams.

8/10

Other reviews of Mass Rebel Infest across the net:

Track premiere “The Portal” at Decibel

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2021/06/03/track-premiere-mental-cavity-the-portal/

Review at The Sleeping Shaman:

https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/mental-cavity-mass-rebel-infest/

The Blog That Failed 7/10:

https://www.theblogthatfailed.net/blog/album-review-tommy-concrete-hexingzirkel-cfbr5

Distorted Sound 6/10:

https://distortedsoundmag.com/album-review-mass-rebel-infest-mental-cavity/

Scream Blast Repeat 6/10