Exclusive Premiere: Mantric, “The Towering Mountain”

Following the demise of beloved progressive metal act Extol, members of the band’s final iteration regrouped in a new outfit, Mantric, and captured my heart with their 2010 debut, The Descent. By design or not, Mantric have been operating on five year intervals — their sophomore album, Sin, came out in 2015 — and now they’re back with their third effort, False Negative, due later this month.

Today MetalSucks is chuffed to premiere “The Towering Mountain,” the album’s second single, following “Polyanna,” which came out in March. The new track finds the band doing what they’ve always done so well, mixing unbridled aggression with hard rock hooks, but dialing down the progressive experimentation a bit this time around. That doesn’t mean the track isn’t any less captivating and dynamic, though; a more pensive middle section concludes with an almost Peter Steele-ian baritone vocal passage, not something I can recall hearing from this band before, and the song structure as a whole is anything but standard. Even when playing it relatively straight, Mantric excel at mixing it up and keeping things interesting.

Check out “The Towering Mountain” below. False Negative comes out April 24 via Solid State / Tooth and Nail.