The Glory Bitches of Dog

One has to wonder whether Birmingham, England's Mistress found motivation in being dropped by Earache Records on the eve of entering the studio to record their fourth album, The Glory Bitches of Doghead, because the wildly imaginative, genre-defying quintet arguably never sounded this pissed off before. That's saying something. Already, Mistress' three prior efforts (each of them released on a different record label, come to think of it) had established their penchant for restlessly exploring any number of extreme music styles — sludgecore, crustcore, grindcore, rott & roll — plus, even atmospheric instrumental departures, and then colluding them with an almost progressive degree of abandon. So while they didn't exactly forgo this agenda for their fourth song cycle, as evidenced by the eight-minute catch-all of "A Godless Drunken Wreck" (featuring all of the "-cores" cited above and then some), the gentle ambience of "Sleep," and the malevolent death/doom melodies of the oddly named "31.6.7 Drown It," never before has Mistress' nihilism been this unapologetically manifest, their lyrics as profane, or their bile so eager to erupt projectile-like at every turn. The message is spelled out plainly enough on "Kunt" and "Just Kill Yourself," which along with other inexorable assaults like the opening title cut, "Cheyne Stoking," and the eponymous "Mistress," favor a sandblasting simplicity, by comparison, splitting the stylistic difference between Entombed and Brutal Truth, if you will. As a whole, it all amounts to yet another consistently surprising and uncommonly engaging LP from start to finish, but, unfortunately, the formidable catharsis achieved here by Mistress apparently drained the last reserves of their life force, because the bandmembers decided to amicably part ways following its release.