Mugshot

While most heavy bands mellow out—even if just a little—as they move through their life and career, Mugshot are not most heavy bands. Just under a decade on from the release of their acclaimed 2016 debut, Dull Boy, the San Jose, CA four-piece are back with All The Devils Are Here. The metalcore/hardcore outfit’s second studio full-length (and first for Pure Noise), from the moment it kicks off with opener “Die In Fear”, it’s clear that this is Mugshot at their most extreme and brutal, both musically and thematically.

That shouldn’t really be a surprise. At least not to anyone who heard their 2023 EP, and debut Pure Noise release, Cold Will. The perfect re-introduction to the band—vocalist Ringo Waterman, guitarist Michael Demko, drummer Connor Haines and bassist Ciro Abraham—it was the perfect appetizer for the 12 intense and blisteringly violent songs that make up this record.
“All of our music is inherently cathartic because of our genre,” says guitarist Michael Demko, “and we try to build that energy musically for the listener—and that lends itself to vitriol and anger, lyrically and thematically. There’s no better catharsis than really heavy music, because you feel it the most.”

While Cold Will was a set of songs centered around the abuse of power and authority from a more political point of view, those on All The Devils Are Here appeal more to personal human emotions. So rather than a call to arms, these songs deal with the consequences and impact external forces have on everyday people’s lives.

“Inherently, we’re fairly political people,” explains Haines, “just in that we lean left and we deal with being in a band and being broke because of the political system we live in. But instead of writing, say, a song about Donald Trump, it’s a lot more about the way that it affects us in our personal lives. I want lyrics that mean something to the person writing them.”

Interestingly, there’s a great deal of religious imagery underpinning this record. And though it’s worth pointing out that the album title is the second half of a line in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest—“Hell is empty and all the devils are here”—it’s such a salient influence because of the now-rejected doctrines under which most of the band members were raised. It also all works as particularly potent metaphors for what they’re writing about, especially when underpinned by the sheer ferocity of these songs.

“Though we may have left those beliefs behind,” adds Haines, “I got into this kind of music while still in the church. But whereas that was all about God being awesome, this is anti-religion. It’s not anti-spirituality, but it is anti-religion. It’s my form of rebellion—I wanted to make the same sort of music that I fell in love with, but I wanted it to be angry.”

To say that Mugshot succeed in that would be an understatement. After “Die In Fear”, the intensity only increases—from the deep, hellish darkness of “Afore A Waking Nightmare” and the pummeling, bruised self-doubt of “Shame”, through the visceral blast of “Skin The Rabbit”, the spiraling descent into madness of “I Will Be Here Forever” and the antagonistic chug of “Baptized In Concrete”, to the abrasive and unrelenting purge of “Where Your Sins Will Lie” and the title track’s search of justice and retribution. On the latter, Waterman bellows and growls ‘I should have ripped you apart when I had the chance’, the savagery of those words matched only by his bellicose delivery.

It all ends with the heavy, insistent chug of “Next To Your Idols”, an incredibly angry song—“It’s so morbid and super-pissed,” says Waterman—that, like much of the rest of the record, feels like pure vengeance. Initially written by Abraham, as it closes the album, it simultaneously opens the door to their future. It also highlights their chemistry as a unit.

“It’s the first thing I had started writing for Mugshot,” the bassist says. “It didn’t sound like a Mugshot song when I wrote it, and it’s still very different in comparison to the rest of our music. It was really meaningful that everybody got on board with it, and I felt really supported when writing it.”

Though it might sound a little different, it’s perfectly in keeping with the tone of the rest of the album, rounding it out with a deafening, and wholly merciless, cacophony of noise that cements the overriding attitude of these songs. As Abraham succinctly puts it, with a wry smile: “There’s not a lot of forgiveness on this record.”

“I don’t think forgiveness warrants having a song written about you,” agrees Demko. “But these songs aren’t just talking about bad people, just about all these kinds of evil that are around us all the time.”

“Some of the songs,” adds Haines, “were about things we were dealing with while we were in the studio, and people that were making us pull our hair out while we were there.”

Recorded in New Jersey with producer/engineer Randy Leboeuf (Kublai Kahn, The Acacia Strain, Gideon, Bad Omens – and not one of the people making the band pull their hair out), it’s the first Mugshot record not produced entirely by Haines. That led to a renewed energy in the studio that’s almost tangible when you hear these songs. It also sees Waterman fully settle into his role as vocalist, after joining the band in 2023. And while All The Devils Are Here doesn’t entirely represent a new era for the band, it does still signify and continue what Haines refers to as the “new vibe, new energy and new presence” surrounding and propelling the band since Waterman joined. There is, however, a new attitude for the band—and for the singer specifically—at the root of these songs.

“For me,” says the singer, “this album is less on the self-loathing side. It’s more like, ‘Okay, I’m done taking shit.’ I woke up one day and decided I was done self-loathing and feeling bad about the way that people treat me. I’m not going to sit here and let someone belittle me, or make me feel a certain way, and just let them just let them get away with it.”

“It’s all about catharsis,” adds Demko, “so if you have some anger inside you, I hope we worded it in a way that makes you go ‘I feel that.’”

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