Svart Crown - Profane
Svart Crown is one of those bands that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while now. If you’ve heard me say this before, that’s because it’s true. There are tons of bands I’ve been meaning to check out. When you have a job that doesn’t have a fixed eight-hour a day schedule (I’m generally working more than 40 hours a week) and they don’t let you listen to Metal while you’re there, you have to make some sacrifices. Trust me, I’ve gotten in trouble with Human Resources once already, so anything heavier than Lady GaGa is forbidden in the office. And you should never tell any of your co-workers that you have a friend who has a band called Skool Sniper and that they have songs about Columbine and Newtown. I guarantee you’ll get hauled in by the behavior Gestapo in record time. Luckily, the freedom to listen to whatever the fuck I want to still exists in my own home - that is until the NSA decides that Metal is somehow subversive. But I digress. This is album number three for Svart Crown and from what I’ve been able to piece together from tracks culled from their older albums and from live footage (there are times when the internet is great for research and this is one of them…), these guys started out pretty much worshipping old Morbid Angel. They’ve steadily grown away from the basic Death Fucking Metal template and began incorporating more atonal riffing and some more progressive structures. Ultimately, though, this is still brutal, ugly as all fucking hell Death Metal. Some have criticized the band for not really changing the basic components of their sound. I kind of agree and disagree. They’ve evolved somewhat since Witnessing the Fall, but that evolution is nuanced and restrained. I think these guys didn’t want to radically alter their sound because that might drive away their fans. I’m not a fan of Progressive Death Metal. It all too often becomes an exercise in navel-gazing and wankerdom. Having overly complex songs that meander all over the place and lack brutality, aggression or memorable riffing might appeal to the fans of Dream Theater, but the average Death Metal fan doesn’t want to listen to that shit. If Svart Crown had gone that route, I doubt that a lot of their old fans would’ve put up with it. Profane tries to change, but not change at the same time. The result is an LP that has some more technicality, but less memorable riffing. While I liked Profane for what it was, I liked their older material a bit more. It wasn’t as original or as technical, but I could remember the songs after the album was over. I can’t say that I can do that with the songs on Profane.
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