I’ve previously written that when I listeneded to WarCrab‘s music I used to think of the kind of whumping sound that would be produced by a giant battering ram pounding against concrete pylons and ejecting the rebar out the other side. I also sometimes thought of Bolt Thrower and Crowbar, and not just because Transcending Obscurity Records refers to those bands in the context of describing WarCrab‘s forthcoming album The Howling Silence.

But this new album requires a reconsideration, or at least a partial reconsideration. Although WarCrab are still quite capable of punching holes through concrete, they’ve brought out other armaments and moods in The Howling Silence and created a shape-shifting amalgam of death metal and sludge that formidably expands their musical horizons.

That much was evident from the first three singles that emerged from the album, and the conclusion is reinforced by the fourth song that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

For my comrades and myself here at our putrid site, WarCrab’s second album, Scars of Aeons, was one of the biggest, brightest, and stupendously heaviest discoveries of 2016. Grant Skelton named it to his list of the year’s best death metal albums. I included a track from the album on our list of 2016’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. And Andy Synn praised the album in his review with these pungent words:

“With a sound that can best be described as a humongous hybrid of the chugging, churning assault of classic Bolt Thrower, the swaggering, sludge-soaked grooves of Crowbar, and the sheer, merciless morbidity of Autopsy at their doomiest, Scars of Aeonsis one heck of a weighty listen. There are riffs here which are heavy enough to break an elephant’s back, and slithering grooves as thick and meaty as an anaconda on steroids.

“In fact I’m surprised this album doesn’t come with an attached safety warning and a recommendation that listeners wear a hard-hat at all times in order to prevent cranial trauma. It really is that [expletive deleted] heavy!”

The news that these sludge/death heavyweights would be releasing a third album this summer (through Transcending Obscurity Records) was thus cause in these quarters for a mixture of excitement and dread — the skull fractures from the last record are almost healed, but new ones will undoubtedly now be opened, and there’s no getting back those inches of height lost in the last pounding, only more to lose as WarCrab drive us into the pavement once more. Continue reading »