If ever there was a time for some ear-piercing metal and a strong beverage to wash it all down with, now is that time. Prepare your bodies and drink from the cup of heresy. This week’s offerings: Brat’s Manslayer and Corporate Ladder Brewing Company’s Chocolate Frog.

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The Tunes: Brat’s Manslayer

Social Grace was an album that took me by surprise when it dropped in my lap; Brat, the Louisiana metal act that had popped up on the scene very soon before the release of their debut, but I found myself thoroughly impressed with their spirit and energy. Plus, it’s always good to have more perspective and (literal and figurative) voices in the metal community, so Liz Selfish’s unique style and presence sold me almost as much as the music did. Now, with a few more years of growth and development under their belts, Brat are back with Manslayer, an album that sees them scaling up their brand of “bimboviolence” by bringing more overt…well, violence. And that violence that inspires this album itself comes from an unlikely font of inspiration: country artists like The Chicks, Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood. Perhaps the average neanderthal metalhead will roll their eyes and dismiss Manslayer outright now, but the erudite among us will notice that these artists have all written songs about violence against men, and what could be a better source of ideas for Manslayer? This time around, Selfish took pen to paper and wrote all the lyrics, which gives Manslayer a little bit of a different flair from Social Grace, but one that doubles down on what makes Brat’s mission and vision different from their peers.

While the lyrical influences might be a little unorthodox, Brat locks right into the classic death metal/powerviolence wheelhouse, musically. With Selfish handling lyrical duties, guitarist Brenner Moate was free to focus entirely on the music, and I think he’s putting out some of the gnarliest, straight up rocking riffs, certainly in all of Brat’s discography, and perhaps in the scene right now. To be honest, though, the standout performance on this album for me comes from drummer Dustin Eagan. How the man is able to put on an entire drum clinic over the course of a 90 second song is beyond me, but he handles the intensity and pacing of these songs with an ease that feels inhuman. Manslayer is certainly darker and more intense than Social Grace, but it retains just the right amount of camp to be fun and slightly tongue-in-cheek (I mean, look at that fucking album cover), while also being dark enough and goddamn heavy enough to satisfy anyone looking for a right-in-the-pocket death metal album. Long live bimboviolence.

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Manslayer is available now on Prosthetic Records. For more information on Brat, visit their official website.

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The Booze: Corporate Ladder Brewing Company’s Chocolate Frog

I’ve always been an adventurous eater and drinker, especially anytime someone opens with “dude, you’ve GOTTA try this”. I’ll try anything once. So begins my experience with Chocolate Frog, a beer I sampled at a bottle/can share at my local watering hole. Everyone at the table basically got goaded into a pour of this “smoothie stout,” and before we could stop and wonder what the hell a smoothie stout even is, it was down the hatch. Or at least, it was trying to go down the hatch. Chocolate Frog is a so-called “smoothie stout,” brewed with and conditioned on cacao and chocolate syrup. There’s nothing “smoothie” about this; it’s much more “milkshake,” so its cloying sweetness was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was the viscosity; this beer is fundamentally unlike anything I have ever tried. The taste and, unfortunately, the consistency are that of a candy bar that’s been left in the sun for about six hours. It’s all sugar sweetness and goopy thickness, with that classic Hershey’s chemical aftertaste, so much so that the 8% ABV gets completely lost. I guess if you’re a chocoholic, this is a drink for you, but for me this was actively gross and I would avoid it at all costs. The shame is, that wasn’t the only Corporate Ladder beer I had that night, and the others were actually pretty good. Oh well. Can’t win them all. Also, middle fingers in the air at J.K. Rowling forever.

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Cheers, it’s officially brat girl autumn!

— Ian