Labels: Vendetta
Review by: Alex Deller
Hmn, this is the kind of “solid enough” doom-record-on-a-hc-label release that has dissuaded me from buying such things the last few years: it’s all well done but nothing to shout about. Crowskin, for example, are more than serviceable – they pack in the heavy-as-fuck riffs with gusto, keep you guessing with a few dynamic peaks and troughs and furnish it all with a nice variety of roars and blackened gargles. While you can’t much complain it’s hardly a bedwetting experience, unless, of course, you’re the kind of mook who’d rather throw on a Monarch album than the Burning Witch discog. Elsewhere, Black Freighter aren’t quite as good but hardly shower-of-shit terrible either, keeping it similarly low/slow but more monotonous in their delivery and letting slip the occasional tell that the guitarist at least was weaned on stuff like Knut and Coalesce, those rumbling hammer-on-pull-off licks still detectable, even though they’ve been slowed a fair few notches down. One for faint praise, then, which is as annoying for me as it doubtless is for everyone else concerned. Tsk.