Dark Funeral - The Secrets of the Black Arts
Having recently had the perverse pleasure of seeing these goat fuckers live, I am proud to report that they are every bit as good on stage as on this masterpiece. Their epic, majestic, yet furious, Black Metal onslaught is captured here in near perfection, thanks to the amazing production of Abyss Studio. But the real praise must of course go to the band themselves for coming up with songs of such power and emotion. This insures that Dark Funeral must be considered one of the top Black Metal bands on the planet. “Lay down your souls.”
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Critical Assault - De-Evolution
When I saw that one of this band’s influences is Pantera, I assumed they must suck, but I wasn’t exactly right. The music is very standard Thrash, with some worthless start/stop riffs thrown in. The vox change radically from song to song, but never really seem worthwhile. Not as bad as I was expecting, but not too good.
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Crisis - Deathshead Extermination
Metal Blade claims that all the vocals on this album are courtesy of the same person. I would swear on a stack of _Necronomicon_s that it’s two different singers, but hey if it really is just a single young lady on there, then my hat is off to her. She’s a fucking lunatic and she can also sound alarmingly like a man when she wants. The music is unremarkable but solid; if the compositions on the next one can match the level of psychotic intensity of the vocals, we’ll really have a sick-ass album.
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Crimson Moon - To Embrace the Vampyric Blood
Atmospheric Vampire Black Metal (enough adjectives for you?) is what Crimson Moon plays and they do a pretty good job of it. The one thing that stands out the most, in my opinion, is the ritualistic element in some of these songs. There are parts of this CD that really, really sound fucking evil. Though this is only their first release, there are some amazing ideas floating around. The problem is in the production department. This album was recorded on a 4-track so the lack of sound quality is understandable, and for that matter, the fact that this album sounds as good as it does is really a tribute to the band. The technical problems tend to pop up on occasion and distract from their music. There are occasional volume fluctuations, the shitty drum sound and a rather rough sound to the whole thing. The rough sound isn’t much of a problem and adds a rawer edge that makes this brutal, but the drum sound ruins things when it goes into a “blast” segment. The reason is that it sounds totally one-dimensional. A drum machine doesn’t really lend itself to Atmospheric Black Metal (Vampiric or otherwise) as it gives it a mechanical sound that doesn’t fit the style of the music. The use of an actual recording studio would vastly improve this band’s sound and, should they get to have this for their next release, they could very easily kick some of the top bands in the scene off their pedestals and usurp the throne of Black Metal.
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Crimson Midwinter - Us Mere Mortals
An atmospheric combination of Black Metal and the frozen hopes of Doom assaults me. Altering their style from super speed to mournful dirge, the vocals from tormented shrieks to demented whisperings, and yet at all times full of majesty. This is near perfection in all ways.
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Crestfallen - Secrets of Time
This band’s bio describes their music style as “melodic Death Metal.” A fairly accurate description. They also have a few Ambient and Atmospheric features. The vocalists are very aggressive in their Death Metal style, the lyricism is morbid and well written, the guitarists work well together in their efforts to bring forward a fierce melody and the keyboarding fits in with the music like the missing piece of a puzzle.
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Crawl - ·construct·destroy·rebuild·
Replacing their drum machine with a human has somehow made this former Death Metal band far more Industrial, and far less interesting. This is by-the-numbers guitar driven Industrial. Very infrequently they have a good idea, but almost instantly ruin it by pulling some ancient cliche out of their asses. Imagine a pitiful attempt at imitating Godflesh at their weakest. Horribly disappointing.
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Corruption - Ecstasy
This sounds like the stupid, late career, moments of Pungent Stench - high repetition of so-called groovy riffs with Death-style vocals that are occasionally run through some kind of distortion. Every now and then Corruption will break away from this mold and prove that they can come up with some interesting stuff, but it’s not enough.
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Corpsevomit - Bastards of Foreverfilth
What we’re got here is a skullcrushing device. The whole thing only lasts 16:34 (with 5 songs), but this cranium cranker is sure to drill a hole in your bean within the first six minutes. Lush progressive riffs in the Morbid Angel tradition rear their heads and then yield to blowout sections of a more raw school, like maybe Possessed. The sustained ferocity on display here is a wonder to behold. [This demo was later reissued on CD by Wild Rags. - Editor]
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