CRUST – DISSOLUTION

(Dissolution comes out on December 15 via Avantgarde Music, and Andy Synn tells you all about it)

It’s undeniable that Crust have been on fire for the last few years, with albums like 2020’s Stoic and 2021’s Wanderers gaining the band more coverage and praise than ever before (including from this site) and introducing even more ears to the band’s signature brand of doom-laden, sludge-laced Black Metal.

And now, with the upcoming release of Dissolution (out next Friday) it looks like they’re set to go three-for-three with what might just be their best work yet.

As you may already have guessed, the key elements which make up the band’s auditory identity – which borrows as much from Grief and Goatwhore as it does Cobalt and Celtic Frost – remain pretty much unchanged on this, their third album in as many years.

And why not? After all, if it ain’t broke you don’t fix it…

With that being said, however, Dissolution is defiantly not a carbon-copy of Wanderers or Stoic, although it does (perhaps unsurprisingly) continue down the same, increasingly blackened path, albeit one which – this time around at least – takes the trio’s scorched ‘n’ sludgy sound in an even darker, doomier direction.

And while I would love to give you a deeply granular analysis of every single aspect of the album, and what makes it so good, I am somewhat pressed for time at the moment (what with “List Week” being right around the corner) so you’re going to have to settle for just the highlights on this occasion.

Don’t worry though, there’s more than enough of them here to make for a reasonably substantial review, all the same.

Take the album’s “proper” opener, “He Carries the Fog”, for example – which is built around a creepily hypnotic, bleakly melodic, central refrain which winds and wends its way through the track in a variety of different forms over the course of just over five eerily infectious minutes – or the blistering blend of blackened fury and doom-laden atmosphere which makes up dynamic dynamo “Graves Await”.

Or perhaps you might prefer the brilliantly-titled “God Made Some Hearts of Stone”, whose gloomily introspective opening and closing segments buttress a caustic core of sludgy Black Metal savagery, or the irrepressibly grim grooves and irresistibly grimy hooks of “The Maniac King” (which is a personal favourite of mine – especially during its monstrous, lurching finale).

And then, of course, there’s climactic final track “Blazing the Trail in the Land of Suffering”, whose intricately intertwined tremolo parts, charred, churning riffs, and lithe, undulating bass lines – all building towards a gloriously gloomy, dramatically doomy denouement – finally give the band an album closer worthy of all their hard work and dedication.

Truth be told, however, you’re likely to have entirely different highlights of your own once you finally hear Dissolution in full – there’s not a “weak” song here, in my opinion, even if some are slightly “stronger” than others – and there’s a good chance that at least some of you who have yet to finalise your “Album(s) of the Year” lists will need to do some rethinking and reshuffling once you finally get your hands on this one.