Plymouth’s finest return with this their fourth album as well as having one of the finest band names in heavy metal, this album has come skidding into my inbox with a trunk full of hope and a tank full of excitement, following as it does their last album, which was an excellent, tightly wedged, package of sludgy, swinging doom rock that genuflected at the altar of Carcass (never a bad thing). It’s an album full of heavy hitting mortar rounds that are generally, excellent examples of the current bench strength of the UK metal scene.
What Warcrab have done a good job at in the past, is contriving to fuse their more Death Metal influences with a slow, doomy, sludge metal that tempers the faster inclinations of their recent back catalogue. I would suggest that this is a bit of a high wire act if truth be told. Straddling two very distinct and different genres, who are not what you would consider to be natural bedfellows being as they are, naturally, very distinct genres. One, being technical, fast, and aggressive whilst the other is generally slower, more free form and more passive BUT still heavy as the bladder of a forty-nine-year-old on a delayed train between Taplow and Maidenhead with an out of order toilet, after seven pints of Fosters. What I am trying to put across, is that Death Metal and Doom/Sludge Metal, are very much like oil and water and trying to muster an alchemist’s touch to fuse the two, isn’t leaving much room for a misstep.
Question is, do Warcrab manage to achieve their lofty aspirational musical goals, or does it fall as flat as a can of Fanta, that’s been left out in the local park for nine days? Well, if I am being truthful, it’s a little for column A and a little for column B. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments of real clarity, depth and song writing excellent on The Howling Silence. ‘Titan of War’ is a swinging, groove laden belter, that growls, sways on a bedrock of some wonderfully discordant riffs that are the rougher and heavier cousin of Alice in Chains Dirt era guitar tones, supported by some gruff and growled Jeff Walker-esq vocals that are concrete heavy and liquidly/rasped bars of hate courtesy of vocalist Martyn Grant. And you can really feel the band flexing their creative muscles and stretching their musical wings on album closer ‘The Howling Silence’ which is a magnus opus, clocking in at well over the ten-minute mark, and showcases a new version of the band, that relies less on the pummelling Death Metal ideas of old, and has metastasized into something altogether different. For me, this is a difficult album to compare with their previous releases, being as it is, an altogether different proposition.
Whilst the band still have their foot (toe) in the more extreme end of things, Warcrab have decided that their future selves exist in the more Cathedral/Crowbar/Down-esq world of darkened lyrical content, with a lighter touch, slowed tempos, epic solos and a more compact production and sound. I appreciate you can’t go back, and I applaud the band for taking the path less trodden, but I feel that despite the obvious plus points to this album, it does miss some of the heavier influences at play on previous albums. That said and not wanting to necessarily appear to immediately contradict myself, album opener ‘Orbital Graveyard’ is a snarling fuckpig of a track that epitomises everything about the band.
As far as summary goes, this is an intriguing album that witnesses the Warcrab machine metamorphosed entirely. Shedding their previous skin and flying off into the darkened sky to bring the thunder, grey skies, and rain, it’s a thoughtful and considered collection of songs that still brings the heavy but in an altogether different way. It’s an album that still probably needs to sit with me for a while as I feel it will take some time to unlock its true nature. This album reflects a genuinely brave decision by the band, to shed the accoutrements of their previous incarnation by fully embracing what were more casual stoner/groove/sludge influences in the past, to making them an intrinsic and core component of the band. It’s a brave decision, but time will ultimately prove whether that was the right call by the band or not.
(7/10 Nick Griffiths)
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