The Mantis Chapter - Sacrificial Offerings

The goth-horror atmospherics of The Mantis Chapter's latest EP are hardly new territory for hip-hop: production recalls Wu-Tang, Gravediggaz, Mobb Deep and many others. Rapper TSOne delivers his rhymes with a brittle, granite-hard rasp in his voice – the lyrics informed equally by gangster ethics and battle techniques. By referencing Sherlock Holmes and Hammer Horror, The Mantis Chapter create their own peculiar version of the gothic-gangster style; it is angular, uncomplicated, and unremittingly dark. The dizzying speed and wide-ranging themes and allusions in the verses of TSOne and guests Eastborn and Tekneek are undeniably skilful and well-crafted. This EP would sound great blasting out of a hearse with some bigass hydraulics. [Bram Gieben]