[Cover photo credit to Matthis Van DerMeulen]
Extreme Metal band Mantar is celebrating over ten years of making music, and made it into the Top 10 in the official German album charts with 2018’s The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze. They’ve recently released new single and video for “Valhalla Hammering”, a song which has a special relationship to their latest album and hints at what they have coming up.
Mantar’s current full-length album, Pain Is Forever And This Is The End, was released via Metal Blade Records on July 15, 2022.
Hanno Klänhardt comments on the new track and video:
“Valhalla Hammering is one of those songs that we instantly fell in love with but never made it on the album last year. It’s one of those songs that you do not write to create an “instant classic” but much rather in order to entertain yourself as a songwriter. It’s about 7 minutes long but we really liked the concept of having the most catchy, on point songs all on the last Album so it never really found its place.
I actually already knew it most likely would not end up on the album when I was writing it. In fact I wrote it with the plan already in my mind to release it quite some time AFTER we would release Pain Is Forever And This Is The End in order to present something completely different as a next move. It’s always good to cause confusion.
The first two minutes are kinda a homage to our VERY early days when Doom as a genre was more important to us. You can hear that for instance on the last song of our first album. It’s a song called March Of The Crowes. People often said that slow SUPER heavy suited us well but we were also always very song orientated, so with Valhalla Hammering we accomplished the best of both worlds. Slow, heavy groove and a catchy, almost trippy hook. Also We have a freakin’ flute solo around 5 minutes in. This very well might be considered the highlight of our songwriting career.
The video for the song is just as trippy as the song itself. Based on a documentary by Amsterdam based artist Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse. Creating the footage was way beyond a regular video shoot and to be quite frank some of it better not be explained any further. Even if we wanted to, we can’t. Enjoy the ride.“
Mantar live 2023:
Europe
08/11 Schlotheim, DE Party.San Festival
PAIN IS FOREVER AND THIS IS THE END TOUR
South America
09/02 Bogota, COL Herbívoro w/ Assassin
09/03 Pereira, COL Rock Plaza w/ Assassin
09/06 Montevideo, URU Live Era w/ Assassin
09/07 Asuncion, PARA PRF w/ Assassin
09/09 Santiago, CHIL Teatro Cariola w/ Assassin
09/10 São Paulo, BRZL Setembro Negro Festival
North America
09/13 Morelia Michoacan, MX Cactus Bar
09/14 Mexico City, MX Sala Sangriento
09/16 New York, NY Desertfest
Europe
09/29 Frankfurt, DE Zoom Club w/ Slope
09/30 Leipzig, DE UT Connewitz w/ Slope
10/01 Pratteln, CH Up In Smoke
10/07 München, DE Keep It Low
10/08 Nürnberg, DE Z-Bau w/ Slope
10/13 Dortmund, DE Junkyard w/ Slope
10/14 *Secret Show*
10/21 Antwerp, BE Desertfest
10/22 Oignies, FR Tyrant Fest
