Dwelling in the gloomy woods of Eastern Connecticut, Crawl Below has become a true anomaly in the world of extreme music. Over the years this one-man act has explored a plethora of different musical styles ranging from Lovecraftian inspired acoustic punk to spectral sounding death-doom. Charlie Sad Eyes, the mastermind behind Crawl Below, has written and recorded some extremely unique sounding releases over the years, all of which I tend to find rather enjoyable.
Crawl Below's new release, “Its Ministers on Earth,” steps into a darker and heavier sounding world by constructing some monolith sized blackened death doom tracks that really pushes the music into this more abrasive sounding world. I personally really enjoyed the last Crawl Below release, “9 Mile Square,” because the overall sound on that album conveyed a more doomy and gothic style very similar to that of Type O Negative. Honesty, this new release threw me by complete surprise, because the delivery comes across with more deafening attitude at times. Even though the sound on this album is not exactly similar to the previous release, I will acknowledge that the compelling sounding atmospheres and attention to detail remains very much the same.
“Its Ministers on Earth,” begins with a brutal sounding slugfest of harsh sounding guitar riffs and foundation crushing drum parts. The opening track, “The Daemon Damned Season,” starts out with the sound of ocean waves crashing against the shore, but eventually turns into an explosion of blistering aggression and ear shattering doom. The old school death growl vocal style used during the first vocal part of the song provides a sinister touch and is eventually accompanied by haunting clear sounding vocals. I thought that the contrasting vocal styles was a brilliant idea, and as the song progresses you find yourself becoming almost possessed by the music’s merciless sounding hypnotic aura.
On the second track, “Red Fell the Vapours,” Crawl Below continues to take a dive down a more venomous sounding musical void and summons forth some agonizing arrangements. I felt as though the music took on a more black metal meets death metal approach that featured a sporadic amount of feverish sounding guitar riffs. “Summoning Rite,” is a short instrumental drum arrangement that adds to the albums ritualistic occult like theme, which I personally think was a creative way to slow the music down a bit before the next onslaught of planet decimating death doom.
Track number five, “Will Rot the Base Chains,” is without a doubt my favorite song off of this album, even though I find picking a favorite to be an extremely difficult task given how well each song was written and recorded. Still, “Will Rot the Base Chains,” is a mesmerizing piece of music that really stands out by offering up a fair amount of eye opening dynamic arrangements. During the entire song I felt like I was listening with great interest and would become almost possessed by the guitar and bass parts along with the adrenaline pumping drumming. Plus, the haunting clean vocals towards the end of the song made you feel as if you were floating through a cosmic sea of comforting darkness.
Once again Crawl Below delivers a solid and utterly sinister sounding release with, “Its Ministers on Earth.” Charlie Sad Eyes is a very creative artist who is willing to experiment with each new release and step outside the box at times in order construct an album that vividly stands out. This is one of those albums where you feel every single riff and every single drum part, especially when the music takes a turn down one of those nightmarish sounding pathways shrouded in a veil of hazy doom. This album is highly worth checking out if you are a fan of blackened death doom with a surreal sounding occult like atmosphere that will make you go crazier than Anya Taylor-Joy's character in the movie, The Witch.
Crawl Below Bandcamp:
https://crawlbelow.bandcamp.com/album/its-ministers-on-earth
Crawl Below Facebook:
No comments:
Post a Comment