Mantar is now streaming their new, standalone single "Valhalla Hammering". Clocking in at seven minutes, the single is sure to please any old-school fans of Mantar's doomier material.
"'Valhalla Hammering' is one of those songs that we instantly fell in love with but never made it on the album last year," said Mantar's Hanno Klänhardt. "It's one of those songs that you do not write to create an 'instant classic' but much rather in order to entertain yourself as a songwriter. It's about 7 minutes long but we really liked the concept of having the most catchy, on point songs all on the last Album so it never really found its place.
"I actually already knew it most likely would not end up on the album when I was writing it. In fact I wrote it with the plan already in my mind to release it quite some time AFTER we would release Pain Is Forever And This Is The End in order to present something completely different as a next move. It's always good to cause confusion.
"The first two minutes are kinda a homage to our VERY early days when Doom as a genre was more important to us. You can hear that for instance on the last song of our first album. It's a song called 'March Of The Crowes'. People often said that slow SUPER heavy suited us well but we were also always very song orientated, so with 'Valhalla Hammering' we accomplished the best of both worlds. Slow, heavy groove and a catchy, almost trippy hook. Also We have a freakin' flute solo around 5 minutes in. This very well might be considered the highlight of our songwriting career.
"The video for the song is just as trippy as the song itself. Based on a documentary by Amsterdam based artist Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse. Creating the footage was way beyond a regular video shoot and to be quite frank some of it better not be explained any further. Even if we wanted to, we can't. Enjoy the ride."
