Violence has been a part of hardcore for as long as hardcore has been around—it’s implicit in the name and the execution. But there’s always been a certain amount of ritual and theater to the violence of hardcore, which is not lost on UltraMantis Black. And how could it be, when the hardcore band’s eponymous frontman is a professional wrestler?
As one of the founding fighters of the independent, Philadelphia-based Chikara wrestling federation, UltraMantis Black—his real name is not public knowledge—has spent the past decade refining his masked identity: an insect-like amalgam of the Japanese superheroes Kamen Rider and, more blatantly, Ultraman. But an ear for music lurks behind that mask. His entrance themes over the years have consisted of Cradle of Filth, Man or Astro-man?, and Japanese proto-metal masters Flower Travellin’ Band. So UltraMantis Black has decent taste—which is also evident in his recruitment of Matt Korvette and Brad Fry of Sub Pop noiseniks Pissed Jeans to record UltraMantis Black, his eight-song hardcore debut.
It’s a violent record. The entire thing weighs in at under 14 minutes, a salvo of short, sharp shocks to the nerve clusters. “Biomonster DNA” writhes like a worm on a hook, as the band jabs blastbeats into muscular breakdowns with indiscriminate bloodlust. Yet it’s also focused, potent, and controlled, the force of a wholesale beating condensed to the flick of a finger. The same goes for “Oil and Gas”, a whiplash windup of tension with no hope of release, and “Stockpiling Graves”, a minefield of disorienting screams and dissonant riffs. UltraMantis Black’s precedents are clear—Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s progressive grind; Das Oath’s screamo antics; the formative metalcore of pre-Jane Doe Converge—but they’re synthesized instinctively and savagely.
The band’s dominant lineage, though, is powerviolence: particularly the mutated strain engineered by the Locust, only minus the sci-fi keyboards and Dadaist song titles. With his bug-eyed mask and wiseass mystique, UltraMantis Black even looks like he could be a long-lost member of that band—and make no mistake, UltraMantis Black has a wiseass streak a mile wide, at least during his day job as a wrestler. His ringside persona is one of an utter asshole: speaking in rarified tones, like a cross between some stereotypical English dandy and Ed Grimley, he plays up his self-styled role as a cult leader and quasi-mythical being. It’s part of his perverse charm, but there’s one thing he’s never less than serious about: veganism. He sips soy chai during interviews and advocates oatmeal and fresh fruit for breakfast, sounding more like a reader of Michael Pollan and Mother Jones than a villainous overlord set on world domination.
When it comes to being the lead singer of UltraMantis Black, he’s similarly serious, and his poker-faced, militant outrage is one of the record's most startling aspects. “Experiment with the delicate nature of nature/ Faulty technology, widespread crop failure,” he screeches on “Biomonster DNA”, railing against GMOs. Big Pharma gets the boot on “Prescription Culture”: “A prescription for any and all pain/ Best treatment for a billion-dollar cure.” “Oil and Gas” tackles fracking with an almost poignant appeal for preservationism, while “Deepest Ecology” is like being throat-punched with a copy of Silent Spring. It’s classic hardcore righteousness without an ounce of irony, but as with the best politicized hardcore and grind, Ultramantis’ technical, lecture-ready lyrics approach a kind of apocalyptic poetry: “Ecologically regressed to a minimalist existence/ One-sided endosymbiosis, fatal collapse."
UltraMantis Black may not be a joke, but is he a novelty? He’s backed by two members of Pissed Jeans, after all, an outfit not exactly known for its heartfelt sincerity. Korvette and Fry, to their credit, take a back seat to their leader; while Fry’s haywire guitar in Pissed Jeans sounds almost like its mocking itself, here it’s pounded down into a disciplined, utilitarian barrage. This is not simply sped-up Pissed Jeans with a dude in a mask yelling over the top of it, and the closest UltraMantis Black comes to Pissed Jeans’ grungy nihilism is on the record’s longest track, the three-minute “Gloom of Prosperity”, which alternately plods and thrashes as the singer recites a megaphone-like rant. As gleefully bipolar as it is, there’s no humor in it, gallows or otherwise: “We are told, however, that we have choices/ That we can dream, that we can mold our own future,” UltraMantis howls into the void of encroaching Armageddon. At heart, though, he seems to be clutching at some twisted, bittersweet hope. This is not the same UltraMantis Black, supercilious and snide, who struts around the lucha libre ring with delusions of cartoon godhood. If ever his fans have been given a peek at the man behind the mask, here it is.
Oddly enough, UltraMantis sounds at least as seasoned as anyone else in his group. His phrasing is fractured here, blurry there—as much of an exercise in choreographed chaos as any of his signature finishing moves between the turnbuckles. There are hundreds of bands making music like UltraMantis Black, old and new, in existence right now. What sets UltraMantis apart is his embrace of pageantry, his open admission that catharsis and social consciousness can be stylized as well as served raw. As for the violence: Its just another way to connect.
