Even their label, 20 Buck Spin, claim to know little about Dead in the Manger. So, don’t count me for the information about this quartet either, even the faces on the band picture appear blurry. Dead in the Manger work, MLP Transience, is then the only thing to truly represent and judge this collective. Without titles to the songs, named succinctly, Parts I through VI, Dead in the Manger marries several dissimilar genres together creating an interesting amalgam of blackened ambient grind.

Part I is nothing but a frozen doomy prelude, with just guitars jingling in the distance, strange beeps and effects providing a sense of electricity and something unkind about to happen. Once the vibrating whisper is added, the tension grows palpable and Part II finally explodes. Alternating very fast blasts and hyperspeed double bass, Dead in the Manger does shift to grind in terms of speed, but the drilling pensive melody and vocals overwhelmed with despair prove that grind is not only about tongue in cheek humor, not only about medicinal terms and cutting up cadavers. Transience actually presents grind with a definitive sense of dejectedness and unease in it, no matter how fast the blasting gets in Part III, the obvious melodic progression simply does not allow the discomfort to cease. And even speed is not there for the sake of speed alone, as Part IV shows that Dead in the Manger gloom does not always have to be fast, however, their tremolo melody has to stay in the pain eliciting realm. The cavernous ambiance of Part V, the spoken vocals proclaiming that “that the world is going to die” (I can’t make out anything else), is the preparation for the grand finale, Part VI, with the heaviest bottom-end, when the band frankly suggests to simply swallow that bitter pill they have been cooking all along. Guitars rise and float, in the mechanical fashion a la Blut Aus Nord, and what was disconsolate in the end becomes totally crestfallen, without any chance for comeback.

I know this review has become a part-by-part song-by-song description, and that is certainly not my style, but I found it easiest to explain how Dead in the Manger sounds by taking you on a more or less detailed descriptive journey. Certainly in the niche of their own, the band melded black metal moodiness and grind brutality in the same smooth cocktail the way their song Parts flow into one another, blending into one continuous 20 min journey you would be loath to stop once it began playing.