Six years down the line from their debut album Rituals, Sweden’s Crawl return with a new ‘un. Their Metal Archives page amusingly to me lists genre as ‘death metal’ and themes as ‘death’. So there you have it really. Nutshell. No frills. Death in a metal style.
Suits me…
I should also say at 30 minutes in length it’s in that (for me) death metal sweet spot album length of 30-35. Get in, crush your skull, get out before the cops come.
A squeal of feedback and we race into the raw downtuned sounds of ‘Undead Crypts’. Bass heavy, gritty and dark. Nice evil vocals. That feeling of some monster flailing wildly about the catacombs. When it slows it’s just gloriously dark and barbaric. Statement made for the album.
‘Throne Of Molton Bones’ has one of those massive drops in tempo but does a great job of slowly winding back up again into the full fury. It just kinda makes me smile and howl at the same time because beneath all this muck there’s a classy band getting its nails dirty. ‘Knives’ almost hits grind speed, ‘Curse Of The Morbid’ is like Hellhammer gone full on death metal with a bass overdose. ‘Ethereal Depths’ follows by doing an outstanding job of a truly grim, nightmarish descent underground where all you have it utter darkness and the knowledge that you are not alone.
‘Where No Light Escapes’ is essentially an interlude, a long sample (the source of which I am ignorant of and resides in that ‘I know it, but…’ torture chamber.
‘Enslaved In Filth’ is the track that really highlights the crust/punk vein in this band for me. It’s there in everything, just spliced into the maggoty riffs, but here and there that loose, raw feel seeps to the surface and makes you pay better attention to how well this album is constructed. ‘Vision Of Burning Apparition’ keeps that in the attention grabbing bass work and the rawness, a monolithic drum battery bringing the blast and the death. Damn that’s a good one. ‘Until They Crawl’ brings a filthy heavy groove before just pounding it into meat, but it keeps rising again. ‘Into Sordid Rifts’, the ‘epic’ at 3mins 42 has a slow buzzing intro before the beast rips out again. There’s almost a tinge of black metal there, but don’t worry that’s murdered savagely by the riff. ‘Buried Lust’ kills this off with an old fashioned, punked up death metal kill spree that is just about perfect.
Honestly this is just top quality stuff. Raw and ugly death metal with a kind of crust soul being tortured inside and the ability to rip out some grindcore speeds when the assault needs it. Powerful, bestial and dark it just continues a great year for death metal. Thoroughly recommended.
(8/10 Gizmo)
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