After whetting everyone’s appetites with their exciting split release with label mates Feral, Swedish Death/Crust titans Crawl finally unleash their highly awaited new full length, ‘Altar of Disgust’, after a gap of six years.
They’ve not mellowed their sound as most bands would. Instead, they’ve rendered their sound even more devastating while making it more nuanced, perfecting their enviable balance of abrasive riffing and explosive breakdowns.
Crawl keep mixing things around to keep things interesting and with bodies piling on top of one another, and what’s more, with the album progressing, they begin to reveal Black Metal influences ensconced in their sound. It’s good enough to have a Swedish Death Metal band showing how it’s to be done and savagely sawing everyone’s heads off with their rusted, jagged, crust-laden riffs, but for them to insidiously change the shades to black in the midst of all the mayhem is pure genius. They shape-shift as if to only deliver a final, decisive, finishing move through the speakers.
Leaving no stone unturned, Crawl have come up with an album that should serve as an epitome of crust-ridden Swedish Death Metal in these times.
