MUTANT STRAIN – Murder of Crows

Like their self-titled debut from 2020, Mutant Strain’s second album, Murder of Crows, is a hardcore tsunami. Mutant Strain’s songs are so intense and delivered at such inhumanly fast tempos you’ll spend your first few listens to Murder of Crows scooping your jaw off the floor and locating your newly missing teeth. But speed and volume aren’t the entire story. Much of Mutant Strain’s explosiveness comes from the density of their songs, each of which seems to cram a full album’s worth of music into a highly compressed thrill ride. The riffs never stop moving, careening like subatomic particles around an unstable uranium isotope. But while Mutant Strain flirts with the edge of meltdown, the formidable rhythm section always stays locked into the groove. That’s why, unlike most bands that play at these speeds, at their gigs, the crowd doesn’t stand around waiting for the breakdown (also because there are no breakdowns). Mutant Strain’s shows look like Hieronymus Bosch paintings: piles of writhing, possessed bodies with vocalist Maryssa hovering over the chaos like a demonic overlord. Murder of Crows is bathed in that same ecstatic energy, so turn it up loud and hang on tight.