Underground never ceases to amaze and give you something special and unique to listen and to satisfy your black heart with. CRAWL is a one man entity with one Michael A. Engle simultaneously playing drums, bass, vocals, synth and samples all at once. If CRAWL performs live that is surely unique and special sight and soundscape to behold and hear. This one contains only four songs with shortest being a little under seven minutes and longest being a little under eleven minutes. But, do not despair. Hark, CRAWL has so much to offer. This is darkness pure, so thick and when listening to this one, you feel like standing in front of a black wall with no possibility to cross it only to wither and die, but also it provides darkness so touchable that you can almost feel the wall of fear and despair with the tips of your fingers. CRAWL plays something in between blackened dungeon doom with tortured vocals screams, some whispers and speak like in horror movies, many samples, distorted bass, slow and funeral drum procession melancholy emphasized with piano and synth parts and some almost ritualistic slowing down, like you can virtually feel your heart beat slowing down and some song parts for me symbolize withering and dying, hopelessness and darkness, with no end in sight only despair and anguish, also with aggression as a result of realizing above mentioned. You must listen to this one as a whole process, it is excellent.
No Point in Living is hailing from Japan and it has been in the scene since 2015. This is very prolific entity under mastermind, one individual called Yu. This is the brand new opus and it contains seven songs. Music of No Point in Living can be described as a mixture between depressive suicidal black metal, more aggressive and raw black metal and atmospheric black metal with longer songs and so many emotions in this opus, making me remember why I love black metal so much as a means of expressing darkness, atmosphere, feelings and your innermost self and demons. Lyrically this opus delves in waters of self hate, depression, hopelessness, making it out of this alive or dead, darkness and nihilism and misanthropy. Vocals are deeper in some songs like singing from coffin or beneath the earth, gloomy and dark, so is guitar work, but there are lots of tempo changes in song parts but retaining some really melodic, at times acoustic synth backed parts to make it almost a vessel comprised of soundscape black ship which takes your mind and body to other spiritual dark dimension in which you feel painful but good at the same time. My personal favorites on this one are: ‘All or Nothing’, ‘Beautiful Tragedy’ and ‘Song of Loser’.
Now, this is nice. For the start of 2023 TOO LOUD Records came out with this nice split release. This is a split record by FanKaz from Italy and Brazilian Out in Style. The record featured six songs, three from each band and it is an interesting one because it kind of shows and presents difference between two approaches to melodic punk, or call it melodic hardcore punk, skate punk anyway. FanKaz are more modern hardcore and technical skate punk, played tightly as well oiled machine with many song parts, stop and go, breakdowns and of course fast parts with melodic but also more hardcore screamed oriented vocals. On the other hand, Out in Style play that simple, no philosophy old school version of nineties influenced skate/melodic punk with some pop punk thrown in here and there and they remind me of all those great bands to whose music I grew up to. Lyrics are personal, but also hold some tone of melancholy and hope at least I see it that way. Both bands are great, but Out in Style are more to my taste. But only little. This one is worth your grabbing if you like melodic hardcore punk.
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