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
The Crawling 