Skip to main content

CD review: 'In Light of Dark Days' - Metal Invader



No one can deny that in recent years it’s common for extreme bands to fuse the Death Metal genre with other genres. Most of the times, this union proves to be a successful one, as the overall results exceed our expectations, by delivering something different and oftenly unique, yet pleasing to our ears.

Following this path, today we’ll be dealing with a band called The Crawling, coming from Lisburn, Northern Ireland. This three-piece band has been active since 2014 and so far has released a single (“Chocking on Concrete”, 2015) and an EP entitled “In Light of Dark Days”, which is our deal here. It consists of three tracks, “The Right to Crawl”, “End of the Rope” and “Catatonic”, having a total runtime of 20 minutes.

“In Light of Dark Days” oozes anger, disgust with life and a profound will to dwell in madness and psychological instability. The Crawling managed to combine Sweden’s Melodic Death Metal with Doom passages and fierce vocals. The riffs used vary in rhythms and heaviness; there are moments when the guitars are so slow and heavy as a ton of concrete and moments when the fast riffing – combining both Black and Death Metal techniques – increases your heart beat. The compositions actually have a strong influence quality, i.e. they can speak to you, grab you by the hand and lead you to a dark, unapproachable place, away from any human contact. Or at least, that’s what I felt. Lyrically speaking, the themes used by the band and their way of delivering their thoughts are powerful; everything is boosted by the excellent vocal performance and the to-the-point channeling of emotions. The production of the record isn’t top notch or crystal clear, however it manages to efficiently present to us the different aspects of each track.

Hopefully we’ll listen to a complete, full length effort soon, as the samples we got from the band’s single and EP are worth our investments. Check them out; “In Light of Dark Days” will definitely leave you satisfied.

4/6

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LIVE review: Bloodstock 2016 - The Moshville Times

After hearing the last few songs of XII boar, I meandered over to the New Blood tent to catch the last bit of The Crawling (8) . Having a kind of doom sound mixed with death metal vocals, I was suitably impressed by them. The crowd present for them seemed to be too with a lot of folk banging their heads or fist pumping the air. Bloodstock 2016 – Friday (James’s view) The Moshville Times
4 comments
Read more

CD review: 'In Light of Dark Days' - Metal Nose

What a great surprise and discovery in doom/death metal The Crawling is! With the first sounds I spontaneously thought of Mourning Beloveth and these three guys come from the neighbourhood. Well actually Northern Ireland, which is properly UK, but well… And there appears to be another link when I do my investigation. The band is founded recently in 2014, but one of the three guys happens to be Andy Clarke from Honey For Christ. That’s a band I always liked as well. That’s the reason for that captivating quality, alright… This trio released earlier the single ‘Choking On Concrete’ and the reactions on social media were full of praise. Now they release a MCD ‘In Light Of Dark Days’ with three songs, altogether good for twenty minutes music. ‘The Right To Crawl’ is our first encounter: slow electrified plucking guitars pass into a monumental outburst with heavy death growls. During the fervent acceleration, vocals get more scream-like akin to black, almost. But then they return to those g...
Post a Comment
Read more

CD review: 'Anatomy Of Loss' - Ram zine

There’s some great titles on this album and one is ‘An Immaculate Deception’ that possesses some tough and twisting rhythms with a deep dark grunting vocal that you can feel in your gut as it rips your intestines out! Moving on to the next track ‘Poison Orange’ I can almost hear the band laughing when they thought up this track title, but also can feel the harshness brooding as it plays out and leaks its venomous liquid through its vicious assault, and this is without being played fast. ‘Acid on my Skin’ speaks volumes from its title and will have you believe that it is toxic and caustic and of course you would be right to believe as its abrasive mark is made with a very potent vocal and large slices of darkened rhythms. ‘All Our Failings’ is a very imposing track that holds a lot of insatiable bait. It begins fast and then slows down to reveal that it can’t make up its mind if it wants to move faster or slower so you just have to go along with the flow, however, the track contain...
Post a Comment
Read more