Crawl – Rituals (Sweden Does It Again, Basically)

 

I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of Swedish metal the past few months. Actually, it’s probably more than I’ve noticed it since it’s been pretty damn good in general. I really need to stop with the italics joke, so let’s see if I can make it through the rest of this. Really I don’t need to say much, to be honest. See that hooded thing by Jonas A. Holmberg on the cover? That’s all you need right there to 457% know what you’re about to listen to. Crawl is one of several sludged-out, blackened char crisp death metal bands of recent years who just know how to wear creepy hoods and slam. Damn it, I failed you.

  

Look how brief I’m being here, it’s amazing. Crawl have been around a mere three years, but their demo and last EP was enough to get the attention of India’s powerhouse of all that is elite, hooded underground, Transcending Obscurity Records. Rituals explains why with bizarre chanting and everything. Coming in at roughly a quick 18 minutes, this album spends no time explaining itself. It takes the decaying hood worn by many a blackened band, dons it, and then begins honoring the progenitors of Swedeath, so to speak, rather quickly, but as such it also has little to offer that pushes beyond the clench of their predecessors, whose bony fingers dug so far into Rituals the scars are practically a new skin. But it’s a skin we’re so used to; we caress it and draw it into the sheets. You simply can’t reject death metal like this, you and I, autocrats. In spite of all the similarities Crawl may breathe from out their blackened hood, they are impossible to hate. A safe position, musically, but sometimes we like it safe and nothing more. When has our moldering soul been something we’re afraid to encloak?

 

Crawl Official Facebook

Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls

Crawl – Rituals
Transcending Obscurity Records
4 / 5