It’s been a few years since they started smashing out their peculiar brand of frighteningly aggressive, genre-melding extreme metal, but German/Turkish two-piece Mantar have barely had time to take stock.
With their punishing 2013 debut album, Death By Burning, rapidly launching guitarist/vocalist Hanno Klaenhardt and drummer Erinc Sakarya into the underground spotlight and on to slots at some of Europe’s most prestigious metal festivals, the duo certainly found themselves surprised by the speed at which things were moving for them. It’s something that Hanno still looks back at with a sense of wonder to this day.
“It still surprises me, and I am grateful,” he remarks. “We just didn’t expect anything at all from day one. All we did was put a lot of effort into everything – rehearsing, playing live, just trying to be the best band we could be at that time. But, of course, no one expected any big success from this kind of band.”
Rapid their rise to prominence may have been, but the music on new album, Ode To The Flame, betrays a total disregard for chasing trends or being overtly listener-friendly. As Hanno goes on to explain, both he and Erinc are proud that they’ve stuck to their guns and retained their intensity. With the debut album gaining so much favourable attention, the pressure could have been on for the duo when it came down to putting together their crushing new record, but as Hanno tells us, Mantar weren’t about to let any outside expectations cloudthem from their goal of creating music exactly how they wanted to.
“We got together as a band and just did our best, playing as intensely as we could,” reflects the frontman. “All we did was take this band seriously and work our asses off 24⁄7. We both lost our jobs and I am pretty much homeless, but at least we can say that this bands slays! That means a lot.” “If you allow other people to fuck around with your brain because they go crazy on pressure and expectations, you better just quit,” Hanno continues. “We just wanted to create new songs, have new material to play live, and hoped it would turn out good… and it did!
ODE TO THE FLAME IS OUT NOW VIA NUCLEAR BLAST
