CD review: 'Anatomy Of Loss' - Glacially Musical

Before I go to sleep at night, reading is typically the last thing I do. The current book is Don't Try This At Home by Dave Navarro. There was a conversation in that book about Steve Vai. Mr. Vai is a very divisive figure in the musical world. That's not to be meant as an insult. It's just that there are a few camps here.

Many folks, even some instrumental bands I've interviewed, have said how do you connect to Steve Vai? The prevailing opinion amongst them is that Vai is simply flexing his muscles for 90 minutes each night. Well this is something that a goodly number of metal bands do each night. There's the constant blast beats that run concurrently with the unchanging demonic vocals. Distort the bass from note one and what we have is a preening tosser on the beach. For the record, anyone who thinks that about Steve Vai simply hasn't heard, they may have listened, but haven't heard.

Anyway, The Cawling hail from one of the four countries in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland. This part of the UK, along with Wales, is sort of, behind a curtain for me, so it's nice to see behind the veil. Our friends are one of the many metal slashers in the world. They're Doom Slash <insert slashing motion> death metal. We're going to ignore the fact that all metal is really doom slash something.

What The Crawling have done is taken the strongest elements of these two types of metal and welded them into something new. Coincidentally, the strongest parts of Doom Metal cancel out the weakest parts of Death Metal and vice versa.

Death Metal, by and large, is monotonous and Doom Metal, by and large, lacks serious aggression. By taking the aggression of Death Metal and the progressiveness of Doom Metal, The Crawling have birthed a spectacular album.

The doom waves splash over the crunch death metal riffs. As Metallica taught us all, the double bass pedal isn't non de rigueur. Blast beats are like vibrato on the guitar, they're accents, not words.

Anatomy of Loss has already secured its place in my personal Top Ten of 2017 and this is their debut.

Nik Cameron
Glacially Musical

Comments

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

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...

CD review: 'Anatomy Of Loss' - Skullfukker

This is a new experience to me but as soon as I randomly start listening to 'An Immaculate Deception & 'Acid On My Skin' I'm fuckin' excited 'cause this is hard hitting quality doom metal but at the same time it does not leave you waiting for world doom part 3. It's aggressive,punchy,catchy and all you want from a good album really,I forgot to mention brutal 'cause it is at times ,like a mix of death metal and doom metal, I guess it depends on how you see it. Anyways, 'Anatomy Of Loss' is suitable for most occations, I'm having a small party now and when I out out of a sudden decided to try this one the party suddenly moved to the next level and everybpdy seeems satisfied. What you get is 7 long lasting tracks from 5-9 mins and value for every penney, and by the way it's spinning for the second time now by popular demand. The Crawling is a band who knows what they do and leave nothing to coincidences, it's professionally excecut...

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