August 2026 - Feature Release - The Fallen Edition
My turn for The Fallen this month and I have gone with Crawl's album "Damned" from 2023 which I recently went back to after listening to it back upon release but then l left it on a shelf. It's a droney, noisey and doomy affair and one that is not usually something that sits in my comfort zone. As always the opportunity is there to write a review or share your thoughts in the thread below.
https://metal.academy/releases/42829
I quite liked Crawl's split release with US black metallers Leviathan back in 2018 but I haven't heard anything else they've done as yet so I'm interested to see what people think of this one.
Oh yeah, this I like. I already have a review up for it, but I am gonna give it another blast before commenting.
Woah!! Come to halt there and apply the handbrake, taking the car out of gear please. Did you just say, “drone metal”? I mean, I know what that is, and usually I don’t like it, but I have been nodding along appreciatively for the past few spins of this one. Maybe we should hit play again and go around the block a few more times to make sure one of us isn’t wrong? That, or I could just admit that my tastes are broader than I thought and we can all just get on with our lives. Either way, as it turns out, Damned is a great record, whatever it is.
Before I had even picked up on the details for this one I had picked up on the Hell comparison and was therefore delighted to see that MSW was involved in the record. Crawl certainly inhabits that same claustrophobic, smothering space that Hell revels in yet at the same time I get a lot of Primitive Man in Crawl’s sound, which is equally high praise also. Considering I had never heard of Michael Engle until this release, it was surprising that his output musically was limited to this solo project and him also being the one-time drummer of a progressive sludge band called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. I can see that he also toured with Boris in 2022 on their US tour, so this is a man with some serious heavy credentials.
This combination of rattling bass and oppressive atmospheres that dredge their way through various elements of noise, doom and drone creates a unique sense of discomfort, of solid things being displaced. The opening track is little more than heavy atmosphere, but it works so well as an introduction to the rest of the album that it is in its own way, perfect. I don’t know that any of these tracks work particularly well in isolation, with my thinking being that they are best consumed as part of a whole album sitting. There are no finger buffet style pickings here, Damned is an experience to be immersed in. Herein could lie potential weaknesses for some listeners seeking a more immediate listening experience. It took me a few goes to understand exactly how to listen to Damned before its true majesty became obvious. Glad I got there though.
4/5
I don’t know that any of these tracks work particularly well in isolation, with my thinking being that they are best consumed as part of a whole album sitting. There are no finger buffet style pickings here, Damned is an experience to be immersed in. Herein could lie potential weaknesses for some listeners seeking a more immediate listening experience. It took me a few goes to understand exactly how to listen to Damned before its true majesty became obvious. Glad I got there though.
4/5
To some extent that is an observation that could be levelled at drone metal as a whole. It is a genre that relies heavily on atmosphere creation and doesn't really lend itself to today's pick 'n' mix listening habits.
I don’t know that any of these tracks work particularly well in isolation, with my thinking being that they are best consumed as part of a whole album sitting. There are no finger buffet style pickings here, Damned is an experience to be immersed in. Herein could lie potential weaknesses for some listeners seeking a more immediate listening experience. It took me a few goes to understand exactly how to listen to Damned before its true majesty became obvious. Glad I got there though.
4/5
To some extent that is an observation that could be levelled at drone metal as a whole. It is a genre that relies heavily on atmosphere creation and doesn't really lend itself to today's pick 'n' mix listening habits.
Yeah, I think that has probably been my Achilles heel with drone in general, trying to pick at it. Suggestions to “try this band” or me simply just dipping into single tracks have left me a bit confused as to what the hell is going on. Based on this feature release, I will learn to listen to any such albums in full moving forwards.
I don’t know that any of these tracks work particularly well in isolation, with my thinking being that they are best consumed as part of a whole album sitting. There are no finger buffet style pickings here, Damned is an experience to be immersed in. Herein could lie potential weaknesses for some listeners seeking a more immediate listening experience. It took me a few goes to understand exactly how to listen to Damned before its true majesty became obvious. Glad I got there though.
4/5
To some extent that is an observation that could be levelled at drone metal as a whole. It is a genre that relies heavily on atmosphere creation and doesn't really lend itself to today's pick 'n' mix listening habits.
Yeah, I think that has probably been my Achilles heel with drone in general, trying to pick at it. Suggestions to “try this band” or me simply just dipping into single tracks have left me a bit confused as to what the hell is going on. Based on this feature release, I will learn to listen to any such albums in full moving forwards.
I also believe that choosing the right time to listen to drone, or any more challenging style of music for that matter, is really important. I have found too often that since I have been checking out music from an internet nerd perspective I am sometimes listening to stuff that I am just not in the right frame of mind for, but continue on anyway and don't enjoy or appreciate it, only to return to it at a later date and wonder what I was thinking as it is actually pretty good (and sometimes vice-versa).
This was more obviously self-evident when we were reliant on physical music collections for the totality of our listening experience. Often when searching for something to listen to you would think to yourself "Nope, not in the mood for that today". Human perception can't have changed that much in thirty years, I just don't think we are as consciously aware of it as we were, or we plough on anyway because we just have to check this particular album out right now. Sometimes we just aren't in the right frame of mind for it and that is fine.
Of course, this may just be me!
I don’t know that any of these tracks work particularly well in isolation, with my thinking being that they are best consumed as part of a whole album sitting. There are no finger buffet style pickings here, Damned is an experience to be immersed in. Herein could lie potential weaknesses for some listeners seeking a more immediate listening experience. It took me a few goes to understand exactly how to listen to Damned before its true majesty became obvious. Glad I got there though.
4/5
To some extent that is an observation that could be levelled at drone metal as a whole. It is a genre that relies heavily on atmosphere creation and doesn't really lend itself to today's pick 'n' mix listening habits.
Yeah, I think that has probably been my Achilles heel with drone in general, trying to pick at it. Suggestions to “try this band” or me simply just dipping into single tracks have left me a bit confused as to what the hell is going on. Based on this feature release, I will learn to listen to any such albums in full moving forwards.
I also believe that choosing the right time to listen to drone, or any more challenging style of music for that matter, is really important. I have found too often that since I have been checking out music from an internet nerd perspective I am sometimes listening to stuff that I am just not in the right frame of mind for, but continue on anyway and don't enjoy or appreciate it, only to return to it at a later date and wonder what I was thinking as it is actually pretty good (and sometimes vice-versa).
This was more obviously self-evident when we were reliant on physical music collections for the totality of our listening experience. Often when searching for something to listen to you would think to yourself "Nope, not in the mood for that today". Human perception can't have changed that much in thirty years, I just don't think we are as consciously aware of it as we were, or we plough on anyway because we just have to check this particular album out right now. Sometimes we just aren't in the right frame of mind for it and that is fine.
Of course, this may just be me!
No, not just you Sonny. A lot of what you have written there resonates with me. In fact, it is one of the things that can make the feature releases more challenging as these are (polite) intrusions into our listening habits which do require us to go into them with an open mind, especially when the clan in question may not be one of our own choosing. I could not for example have appreciated The Revolution features probably at all last year, but now with a solid bed of hardcore punk listening under my belt they are much more valuable to me. I make it sound like I have trained my listening habits and in some way I suppose I have. Timing, mood and mindset is important, I definitely agree.
It is definitely an issue with the feature releases. I very often think, "no I really can't face that at this time" and usually give it a pass. Sometimes I plough on regardless and neither do it nor myself any service by doing so.
It's okay to give things a pass though, especially if it preserves individual contentment at the time and a review being irrelevant also. I have come to see the feature releases as an opportunity to share an album with others which is entirely at their own discretion to check out or not. The ethos of the MA is that not of it is mandatory which is why the place works so well.
It's okay to give things a pass though, especially if it preserves individual contentment at the time and a review being irrelevant also. I have come to see the feature releases as an opportunity to share an album with others which is entirely at their own discretion to check out or not. The ethos of the MA is that not of it is mandatory which is why the place works so well.
True.