(written by Islander)
In late June of this year something very surprising but very welcome happened: The vanguard industrial death metal band Crawl released their first album in almost 30 years through THC MUSIC/Virgin Music Group.
That album, No Way Out, was the horned flowering of seeds planted when Crawl reunited for a record release show on the occasion of the reissue of their remastered EP Womb, originally released in 1993 under the band’s previous name, Bleed.
Following that August 2019 performance, the band decided to start writing new material, and eventually produced No Way Out — despite being slowed by the challenges of reintegrating after so many years and despite the big roadblock thrown up by the covid pandemic (as well as a lot of subsequent impediments we needn’t detail that created further delays).
All the obstacles undoubtedly spawned a lot of wrenching frustration among the members of Crawl, but for both old die-hard fans and a lot of new ones, the album proved to be well worth the wait. It seemed like the band had picked up right where they left off so many decades ago, without missing a step. As a tremendous example of what we’re getting at, today we’re premiering a visually startling lyric video for the new album’s title track.
photo by Victoria Fischer
A lot of qualities in this song make it stand out, and many of those are representative of the album as a whole.
One big standout are the vocals of Thomas Danz. They’re voracious, explosive, and extend across an impressive range of larynx-based extremity, but they’re also impressively intelligible. You would distinctly hear what he’s growling, roaring, and insanely howling even if the words weren’t dramatically emblazoned in the video, and his vehement edicts at the song’s end (“Live For No One! Die For No One!”) are spine-tingling in their intensity.
Other standouts include the music’s visceral power and its combination of mechanistic precision and mauling and mangling mayhem. With a gritty cutting edge the riffing rapidly jolts and frantically squirms, reaching depths of dismal darkness and heights of eerie, harrowing delirium during the choruses. The drumming is the song’s most mechanistic aspect, both razor sharp and piston-like, but it’s also inventively off-kilter in some of its progressions.
In a nutshell, the song hits hard enough to punch through walls and vigorously punches the listener’s pulse too, while also spinning and scrambling heads.
CRAWL line-up:
Thomas Danz – Vocals & Bass
Jason DeJardin – Guitar & Machines
Tim Pantzlaff – Guitar & Machines
Josh Hovland – Drums
No Way Out (the album) was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jason DeJardin at Grave Error Renderings in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was produced by Crawl with executive producer Thom Hazeart, who also was responsible for art direction/design. Additional art direction/design is credited to Melody Meyers and Crawl.
The album is available on CD, vinyl, and digital formats at Bandcamp. To make it easy for you to check out the album as a whole, we’ve included a full stream below.
NO WAY OUT:
https://crawlgb.bandcamp.com/album/no-way-out-3
FOLLOW CRAWL:
https://www.officialcrawl.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CrawlBandGB/
https://www.instagram.com/CrawlBandGB/
https://crawlgb.bandcamp.com/