The Mansters – Snapshots from a Shitshow
Release Date: 1st October 2025
Label: Loyal Blood Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Punk, Skate-Punk, Hardcore, Scandirock.
FFO: The Good The Bad and The Zugly, Negative Approach, The Ramones, Black Flag, Turbonegro.
Review By: Magnus Rotås
Norwegian punk-rockers The Mansters deliver an album of 13 blistering, short and punchy tracks. This is high octane, feel-good punk that brings you back to a time when you were just hanging out with your mates, with a skateboard in hand, no money, no dreams, no worries, just making the best out of the moment and having a good time.
Before you even start listening to Snapshots from a Shitshow the album title puts a smile on your face, and that smile will stay firmly on your face until the last track of the album fades out, and you find yourself waking up in a gutter somewhere in Norway, ready to seize yet another day.
That all being said, while the album comes off as loads of fun, the lyrics are all filtered through a lens of self-loathing, frustration, and irony. And it’s this blend of both carefree fun and the bleak reality that gives the record a greater sense of realism and enough bite to elevate it above just being naive escapism from life’s many worries. These are tales from the shitshow we all call life. And it wouldn’t really be a Norwegian band if they didn’t have at least a tiny bit of darkness in their music, am I right?
This album is in many ways a continuation of their previous album Lessons in Giving Up, but this time with twice as much meat on the bone and greater hooks. At just over 20-minutes long, the album is still a little short, and I really wish there was more music on here. I hope whatever they do next will at least hit the 30-minute mark, as the longer songs here, or rather the ones that are longer than a minute in length, are some of my favorites of the whole album.
This record also manages to stray away from the cardinal sin of Punk of sounding incredibly samey, by having a lot of variety within its track list. Most tracks on here have their own identity that makes them stand out from the rest. From the urgent I Should Be Getting More Likes that sounds like it’s straight from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, to the Scandirock-infused The World Is My Ulcer, to the almost shoegaze-tinged title track, this record features almost the whole spectrum of punk music.
The album artwork gives associations to the toilet scene from Trainspotting, and the songs themselves feel as chaotic and free as the film.
The second track Badeland Hardcore opens with an audio sample of what sounds like a Norwegian interview with a band saying “We have stolen some riffs… like straight up”. The title is a wordplay on fellow countrymen The Good The Bad and the Zugly’s Hadeland Hardcore album, but this time meaning water park hardcore. There are tons of funny little references like this throughout the record, but most of them come across more as internal jokes within the band that are not necessarily intended to be understood, not outside of the Norwegian speaking domain at least.
There are some creative flourishes on the record that, while sparsely used in places, adds so much to these seemingly simple tracks. Take the aforementioned Badeland Hardcore and how they slow down the last riff before ending the song, or the rapid drumming in the middle of Home Til I Die, or even what sounds almost like blast beats on the end of the less than 20 second long, Johnny Is Single Again. The straight to the point, no bullshit attached track No Money, I’m Worried might be my favorite on the album, though, as it manages to blend the hardcore punk, with a catchy hook so seamlessly.
The Mansters are really evolving as a band and have taken a big leap with this album. If they can keep honing in on the aspects of their music that makes them unique, then I think their future will be very bright, despite the shitshow.
(3.5 / 5)
