Norwegian hardcore rockers The Mansters released their latest album “Snapshots From A Shitshow” on 1st of October; their first album released through Loyal Blood Records. Hailing from Tonsberg, Norway, The Mansters are known for their hardcore roots, more recently bending the genre by blending instinct and pure raw energy into their craft, dipping into punk and thrash while they’re at it. The Mansters are: Jan Henrik Skinnes (vocals), Andreas Winje (guitar), Filip Hvitstein (guitar), Simon Hvitstein (bass), and Ole Christian Langedrag (drums).
“Snapshots From A Shitshow” is all about capturing over a decade of evolution and transformation for The Mansters, with the end result being a hybrid mashup of punk, rock, and hardcore. There are overall themes of frustration with expectations of fans and the mainstream, often presented with biting humour. This album is all about uncensored observation and no holds barred social commentary.
The album opener is called “The World Is My Ulcer”. Straight from the go, the strummed guitar led intro gave us notes of classic Green Day, but this soon gave way to energetically shouted punk style vocals, morphing the whole atmosphere of this track. That, and the short, sharp nature of this track, are reminiscent of the Sex Pistols, which gets us pumped up for what’s to come.
The second track is called “Badeland Hardcore”, which starts with a chat amongst the band members in their mother tongue, before kicking off into shouty English punk vocals alongside super energetic drums, guitars, and bass to create a bop seriously brimming with attitude. “Badeland Hardcore” is one minute and 52 seconds long, which surprisingly makes it one of the longer tracks on this album, and we couldn’t help but find another Sex Pistols similarity, as the whole thing reminded us strongly of “God Save The Queen”.
Third track, “The Beach”, takes on a very similar style to “Badeland Hardcore”, even beginning in near enough the same manner. What stands out to us so far is the length of the tracks, they’re all cut very short in typical punk and hardcore style, with the first three all being under two minutes.
The fourth track is called “Lessons In Giving Up”. Like “The World Is My Ulcer”, we really enjoyed the strongly guitar led intro to this track, which gave us an early Foo Fighters feel. The vocals absolutely once again change the whole thing up, and we’re finding The Mansters’ ability to combine somewhat contrasting instrumental and vocal styles to be an interesting quirk that just adds an extra dimension to what are already hard hitting tracks.
Fifth track, “Home Til I Die”, is a typical hardcore track though, quick, angry, and aggressive, but otherwise not packing many surprises.
The sixth track is called “Something”, which starts, like a few of the tracks before, with the band chatting to each other on what sounds like the phone, before kicking it right up again, just like the second track, “Badeland Hardcore”, but nearly a full minute shorter.
The seventh track is called “I Should Be Getting More Likes”. This track kicks in straight where “Something” leaves off, and it comes off as a bit of a blend between the two tracks. We have to admit that we were struggling at this point to keep up with the album and find highlights to pick out, as each track comes and goes so quickly, many with a similar sound that seems to blend into each other somewhat.
The eighth track is called “Panicboy 2”. Like elsewhere in this album, this track has quite a catchy Green Day vibe to the instrumentals. It’s at a slightly slower pace, albeit no less energetic than the other tracks in this album so far, and we really enjoyed this one. It’s another of the album’s longer tracks at two minutes long, but even then we found it just a touch too short and would have liked to have heard just a little bit more done with the excellent instrumentals.
The ninth track is called “Run To The Pils”, which is all about getting away from life’s problems. The title of the song is a fun play on the phrase (and song) “Run To The Hills”, but it’s interesting how it can still be taken in a couple of different directions, pills or pilsner, both of which are pretty heavy coping mechanisms.
The tenth track is called “Yngve’s Fault”. Another track that begins with a short snapshot of a conversation, it follows the same formula of dropping straight into the chaos after the short spoken intro.
Eleventh track, “No Money, I’m Worried”, starts a little differently, with a distorted bass before the guitars and shouted vocals kick in with the same vibe as the rest of the album so far.
The twelfth track is called “Johnny Is Single Again” and stands out for being by far the shortest track on the album. Indeed, it’s very short even by punk standards, being only 18 seconds long, with the lyrics consisting of a repeated “Johnny is Single Again”. We’re not sure what the story is behind this track, but it sounds like Johnny might be looking for a date.
The thirteenth and closing track is the title track, “Snapshots From A Shitshow”. This track is actually the longest one out of the whole album at two minutes and 25 seconds. Title tracks come with some level of expectation, and “Snapshots From A Shitshow” does deliver on raw emotion in the lyrics, as well as a more elaborate instrumental piece, closing the album off with something a little different.
We know this is a punk and hardcore album, so we needed to manage our expectations with how complex and varied the individual songs might be, but we can’t help but feel a little let down by this album. The album contains 13 tracks but actually only lasts around 20 minutes, with every song following the same rapid, hard hitting formula. It’s not necessarily the length of the tracks that’s the issue, punk songs tend to be on the shorter side and The Mansters are known for following this genre trend too, but variety was very limited and we struggled to pick out any particular song over another. All the tracks had energy and emotion, and many of them were catchy and fun, but a few more twists, maybe a couple of slower tracks, or some more drawn out instrumentals could have given each song an individual edge and helped create some highlights. If high octane, non stop hardcore fury is your kind of thing though, you’ll find things to like with this album. It’s fun and personal, but very genre specific.