(written by Islander)
Wyrd is the third album, by the Italian death metal band Crawling Chaos, and it’s set for imminent release by Time To Kill Records on March 28th. As the label explains, “It is an anthology inspired by the role of feminine figures in European mythology and their connection to the concepts of fate and free will.” Crawling Chaos elaborate further:
Wyrd is our third full-length assault and it is a twisted journey through fate, destiny, and everything that lies beyond free will. Inspired by the ancient Northern European concept of wyrd, this record dives headfirst into the dark side of what it means to become.
Each of the ten tracks is a chapter in a mythological fever dream. You’ll meet some of the most powerful, terrifying female figures from mythology, folklore, and history: the Norse Norns, Macbeth’s witches conjuring chaos for Hecate, the relentless Greco-Roman Furies, and those wicked Thessalian necromancers who bend the dead to their will. It’s a damn coven of destruction.
The band add: “As always, we’ve packed the album with hidden references, quotes, and easter eggs — so if you love digging deep, there’s plenty to uncover.”
These are interesting (and timely) themes from literature and legend, and today we’ll all see how Crawling Chaos have represented them in the new album’s music, which we’re about to premiere in full.
Crawling Chaos bookend the album with instrumental pieces, “The Garden of the Earthly Delights (Part I)” and “The Garden of the Earthly Delights (Part II)“. The opener deploys ringing chords and shrill piercing tones, as well as murmuring bass notes and elegant arpeggios that also ring. The sensations are mysterious and disconcerting, beckoning but menacing — and the track ends with sounds of thunder and the famous line by one of Macbeth’s witches: “Something wicked this way comes.”
The closing track brings an elegant acoustic folk melody with a medieval air, backed by eerily shimmering keys and interspersed with other rippling acoustic notes — but thunder rolls again here too.
What happens in between? What wickedness comes? It might be useful to draw upon another dialogue by Macbeth’s witches:
First Witch: When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
The hurly-burly of Crawling Chaos begins with “Three Times Three“, which may itself be another Macbeth-ian reference, since at one point the three wyrd sisters in the play circle hand in hand to cast a spell, “Thus do go about, about / Thrice to thine and thrice to mine / And thrice again to make up nine.”
In that song Crawling Chaos do unleash chaos, through riotously hammering drumwork, fantastical fretwork flurries, and savage roars, but equally they create chilling melodic spells that flow like an inviting yet poisonous fog. The music jolts and jitters, swirls and shimmers, creates sensations of savagery and wails like sirens. The guitar solo sounds like sorcery all by itself, and witches seem to scream.
The song reinforces the impressions created by the band’s previous releases, summed up by Time To Kill: they craft “a blend of groovy and melodic death metal that balances intricate technical flourishes with a strong focus on the classic concept of riff and song.”
And beyond that, they stay true to the album’s concept by creating an atmosphere of the wyrd at the same time as they’re racing hell for leather and scrambling brains with all those technical flourishes.
Over the course of the album, however, they create the atmosphere of the wyrd in other ways too — for example, in the lilting acoustic instrumentation and celestial choral voices that launch “Nails of Fate“, which then delivers a vicious nail-gunning attack augmented by writhing and darting guitars, a wildly screaming and spiraling solo, and vocals that scream like a burning man too. Yet that song also rises in grandeur, adding yet another dimension to the song’s many facets.
Some of the “wyrd-ness” in the album sounds more dismal and daunting, more expressive of misery, and at other times more freakishly (and dangerously) jubilant — and you’ll experience both of those sensations in “Veiled in Secrets” and in “Witch-Hunt“, both of which are also home to spectacular guitar solos.
Beyond the “wyrd-ness”, Crawling Chaos pack all of the songs to the brim with intricate and elaborate progressions of sound, most of them generated at high speed, enough to get pulses racing and keep heads constantly spinning. But they also keep muscles moving with compulsive rhythms and spine-splitting grooves, and the vocals are never far away as a source of (well-enunciated) belligerent savagery or (less intelligible) brain-boiling madness.
“Nomen Omen” is the only track on the album that doesn’t focus on a female figure. As the band explain:
“The protagonist is Judas Iscariot, who, from his point of view, narrates his desperate realization of how the betrayal of Jesus Christ was necessary for the salvation of humanity through the inevitable outcome of the crucifixion. Thus, he comes to understand that he is merely a pawn of History, trapped and pulled by the strings of fate (the wyrd) or – even worse – by a despicable God who has cynically sentenced him to eternal damnation merely to accomplish His own purposes. His name thus becomes synonymous with ‘betrayer’, a meaning that, in the logic of predestination, he carried from birth. A name, a destiny: Nomen Omen, indeed”.
The song is different in other ways too, chilling and otherworldly in its overture, and a channel of intense distress even as the instrumentation and vocals go wild.
And with that, we’ll leave you to the music. It is indeed (to turn to the witches again) the makings “For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
CRAWLING CHAOS:
Manuel Guerrieri – “MG” – Guitars, Vocals
Andrea Velli – “Shub” — Guitars, Backing Vocals
William Leardini – “Will” — Fretless Bass
Edoardo Velli – “Yog” — Drums
Time To Kill will release Wyrd on digipack CD, marble vinyl LP, black vinyl LP, and cassette tape editions, as well as digitally (and with apparel). Find pre-orders via the links below. The album comes recommended for fans of: Fleshgod Apocalypse, Allegaeon, and Psycroptic.
PRE-ORDER:
https://timetokillrecords.com/en-us/collections/crawling-chaos-wyrd
https://crawlingchaos-ttk.bandcamp.com/album/wyrd
CRAWLING CHAOS:
https://www.instagram.com/crawling_chaos_band
https://www.facebook.com/crawlingchaosit
https://crawlingchaos.bandcamp.com/