Okay, so I’ve been real critical of European death metal bands
\nof late. I can’t help it – and, if you got the amount of death
\nmetal in the mail to review like I do, you’d probably be making
\nsome of the same comments I have been recently.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to Sweden’s The Crown – well, I’m willing to
\nadmit that I could have been wrong about some of my
\ngeneralizations. Their album
\nDeathrace King<\/i> contains the kind of originality and
\nexcitement that I’ve found to be lacking in many recent releases of
\ntheir contemporaries.<\/p>\n
So who are these five guys – I mean, besides me rattling off
\ntheir names as I’ll probably do later in the review? Take the
\ndarker side of music like Slayer, add in the breakneck pace of a
\ngroup like Napalm Death – and throw in a touch of irreverence from,
\noh, let’s say Lungbrush, and you’ve got a band who knows how to
\ncreate fresh sounds. From the disc’s Venom-on-speed opener
\n“Deathexplosion” to the slow build of dark terror of “Killing
\nStar,” there’s very little about these guys not to like.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting sometimes to hear the clash of styles, such as
\nthe frantic speed metal drumming of Janne Saarenp\u00e4\u00e4 below
\nthe almost Kiss-like guitar melodies of Marko Tervonen and Marcus
\nSunesson, all with bassist Magnus Olsfelt thumping away (albeit a
\nlittle too hidden in the mix at times) and vocalist Johan
\nLindstrand growling with remarkable clarity. Sure, you still need
\nthe lyric sheet at times, but more often than not, Lindstrand makes
\nsure that you can understand his dark rumblings.<\/p>\n
As for the dark imagery in
\nDeathrace King<\/i>, sometimes it doesn’t really sound as
\nconvincing as, say, Mercyful Fate. I won’t question the band’s
\nbeliefs, but sometimes it feels like there’s not a lot of muscle to
\nback up those commitments (though an exception is made for “Dead
\nMan’s Song”). But, in The Crown’s defense, the music is actually
\nfun to listen to, and it transcends any shortcomings one might want
\nto try to find.<\/p>\n
Tracks like “Devil Gate Ride,” “Rebel Angel” and “Total Satan”
\nhelp to assure the listener that
\nDeathrace King<\/i> is a disc you’ll want to keep coming back to
\nover and over again. And, it helps restore my faith in a genre that
\nI once feared could be headed to stagnation. The Crown helps to
\nassure that darker, death metal is by no means dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6371],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36691","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-crown","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36691"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36691"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}