Dumpster Mummy have officially broken the doors off the Funhouse, their jam/living quarters in Dartmouth, NS, and unleashed their first album in over 3 years. They have been dormant since the album cycle of their 2015 release “Trenchfoot”, which led to an extensive run of touring, including the band’s first tour across Canada and the successful “Twenty Shredventeen Tour” tag-teamed with Hamilton’s Voltang. Now, they are back and as heavy as ever with a fresh sound, new voice and new album.
The band say that 2017 was a difficult period for them overall.
Just before New Years, they published a post on their Facebook page detailing a year of struggles, line-up changes and the plans, shows and album that were derailed as a result.
“It’s almost embarrassing to show our faces around here. 2017 was not the year we hoped for, not the year we planned. In fact, it was probably one of the worst years we’ve had as a band. We’ve let ourselves down and, most importantly, our fans,” say the band.
The open letter to their fans ended on an optimistic note: the promise of a new voice, new album and a brand-new mummy emerging from the coffin that was 2017. With their past experiences now behind them, they are ready to deliver on all promises.
“We’ve been doing the damn thing behind closed doors. In order for us to continue we had to start fresh. We essentially put together a new album and, most importantly, we found our new voice.”
Their new voice is Cujo Bonvie, who you would know if you spent the past few years around the Fredericton metal scene as he has. He was briefly the front man for a few projects such as Winter’s Howl, Civil Defence, The Mind Unleashed and City of Ancients. Bringing intensity and a love for crowds and mosh pits, Bonvie channels all of it into an aggressive, raw take on the band’s sound.
The first taste of the freshly-wound mummy was the single “T.O.B.D.G.A.E.,” also known as “Barn Burner.” The tune is cutthroat and straightforward; there are no abstract concepts to be found here, just the notice to shut up and get out of their way. Everything on the track is mixed louder than anything the band has recorded, courtesy of Scott Miller from Ancient Temple Recordings, and they execute their classic routine of building up a healthy stock of pent up energy and finishing with the hardest hitting notes of the song.
The Mummy dropped the rest of their creation in the form of their second self-titled album: an obvious statement of the bands reinvention.
The album kicks off with the track “Fronthouse,” pummeling in with a riff that hits the listener head-on, then transitions into “Wojtek,” an on-brand track that pinballs back and forth between chugging top-string notes and slow, tasteful climbs.
We then encounter some new concoctions with the track “Lugnuts,” which uses swampy, shuffling drum patterns to create a snapping rhythm which eventually fades into a new frontier for their Halloween-themed sound with an eerie solo section. It finishes off with a tornado-esque riff that will force you to re-collect yourself after you experience it live.
“White Knuckle” and “Liquid Wrench,” the shortest tracks on the album, provide the weirdest elixir of sounds. Both songs have Bonvie’s vocals heavily dubbed over with effects, blending them with the wormhole created by the immense array of pedalboard effects assembled by guitarist Brad Holmans.
The track “Decorative Patio” is the closest to the Mummy’s former sound that the album offers. It turns up the amount of double-kicks, buzz-saw guitars and overall death-metal overtones. There is plenty of grain and grit on this track, especially in its ending breakdown.
The penultimate track, “Gibbet,” is without question the album’s best. Lyrically it offers a paranormal take on the story of Captain Kidd, where he comes back to haunt all of those who led mutiny against him. The song features guest vocals by Marc Bourgon of Cambridge, Ontario’s Greber, a two-piece known for deafening those who fail to wear earplugs. The track is almost six minutes of the band’s most compelling collection of riffs, with Bourgon’s vocals kicking things into high gear at the climax and continuing into another earth-shaking onslaught.
The album closes with “Funhouse III,” the newest installment of what is now a trilogy of tracks named after their home base.
This album is on all fronts an impressive return to form for the Dartmouth natives, establishing themselves in the top tier of Atlantic Canada’s metal scene.