Systemik Viølence - Negative Mangel Attitude Review

Punk and metal have a complicated relationship, or at least we treat them like they do. As fans, we like to be something—a metalhead, a punk, a dissobro. As music seekers, we like to have genre guides—punk-born tags like crust, mathcore, grindcore, metal-born tags like doom, death, black, kissing cousins like sludge, thrash, deathcore. And the bands we value tend to play to or play with these expectations. Others eschew the norms of where they’re placed or even fight the idea of being the guitar music we’ve all come to love—but not Systemik Viølence. These Portuguese knuckleheads just wanna play screeching chords, overdriven bass, and venomous vocal lashings loud, fast, and loud.

Loaded with samples that range from humorous to nonsensical to incendiary, Negative Mangel Attitude stomps over the lines between crust and crossover thrash with a black metal snarl. The music across its snappy run never strays from a simple and pit-friendly lane, Systemik Viølence working only to watch bodies circle, flail, and slam. This outing may not sound as buttoned up as a modern thrashy number like Enforced’s latest,¹ but the crunchier, screechier production services the worn denim vest persona well. It is, in any case, a step up from the possibly mixed, delicately mastered hot recording that blew out with their debut Satanarkist Attack. And luckily for us, the more dialed recording process has granted an album with even greater throaty vitriol than before.

Earlier Systemik Viølence may have run fiery with d-beat and punk energy, but as we all know man cannot subsist on d-beat alone.² Certainly, plenty of tracks still feature that staple rhythm of its namesake genre (“Self-Reliance,” “Into Dis-Belief”), and other segments lay peppered with a reliable Discharge energy. But these moments rest as accents amongst the greater thrashy whole of Negative Mangel Attitude, which allow the switch-ups in “Uncivil Disobedience” and “Ego Is the Bastard,” the latter even featuring a sneaky guitar solo, to land with extra weight. Continually drummer Artur Pacheco (Prayers of Sanity) does his best to lay skin-pounding waste across the board—the slow and skanky “Moral Stabbing” and the fast and poignant “Scene Stomper”—letting Negative Mangel Attitude remain a rhythmic explosion through and through.

Not every set of tones, though, reflects the shaking abandoned warehouse or dicey, tucked away underpass as serviceably as they should. In Systemik Viølence’s further adoption of traits that align with early black metal punkiness, particularly at the mic of Mário Ribeiro (Verme), the bass presence that usually propels the fury of squabbles in this crusty realm feels dampened. As such, many tracks present as guitar-forward, with the closing duo forgoing any snarky sample intro for a slippery melodic lead (“We Are the Graves of the Posers”) and brooding thrashy jangle (“Scene Stomper”). Former bass player and now guitarist João Duarte, however, has stepped up the six string³ game mightily to throw down choppy thrash scurries (“Extinta Raiva,” “Laws of the Purge”) and quick, piercing noise fills. Still, bassist Zëusu Bäsuku (Phenocryst, ex-Murmúrio) finds a way to let his low-end hang when riffs dissolve into feedback (“Into Dis-Belief,” “We Are the Graves of the Posers”) or take a back seat to a shifting violence (“Uncivil Disobedience,” “Intellectual Prolapse”), so not all thwonk hides under crunch.

A band like Systemik Viølence will probably never end up releasing a d-beat or thrash classic in this day and age, but I don’t think that’s their goal. Negative Mangel Attitude stands instead as a vehicle for their frustrations in their unique regional flavor. Disdain and the human experience unites us all no matter how different we may seem. Somewhere tucked away in a grimy alley not too far away from the idyllic coasts of Lisbon, Systemik Viølence lurks ready to remind you that all is not as it seems. Take a moment to hear them out, mosh a little, wrap a cold one in a paper bag, and party like the world is going to shit.