From parts unknown comes Crowlord with a harsh blackened album of weird distorted overdrives and a mixture from the 7th layer of hell. To Pay The Debt of Nature is a harsh and unrelenting album containing the most rabid and unpolished sound I have encountered in quite a while. The guitars is a howling distorted mass and the guttural screams harvested from sound of a collapsing concrete factory makes it even more of a harsh environment to get a grasp of. In the midst of all that cacophony arises various melodies tunes out on a synthesiser from the local cesspool. In a way I kind of enjoy Black Crow King for the guttural mess that it is but on the other hand I find it hard to really get into the shape and sound of the album. One could point some influences hailing from the primitive black metal of bands such as Ildjarn and Sort Vokter but it also stands solidly on its own misshapen legs.
I, Crow open up the album with a distorted nightmare of slow and quite minimal riffs on top of a background of screaming and subliminal sounds, the music quickly turns into a mess of rampaging resonance that feels like a landslide coming down on top of your senses. The album progresses into The Shadow Falls, a quite minimalistic track with some interesting deep and brooding drumming. The weird mixture of intangible riffs and weird synthetic atmospheres do lend this song some merit but in the end it is still quite a hard track to grasp. Vengeance is the shortest of the tracks ranging only 5 minutes of mutated sounds from the catastrophic failure of someone’s internal organs. The cavernous aspect of Crowbait looms indifferent for a while and remains a haunting reminder of the distorted mind behind the album. When the last strangling sound of Excarnation Ritual drifts away on tattered wings I feel quite puzzled. In one way I can appreciate parts of the album for what it is in ways of a chaotic drifting entity of blackened ambitions but in another sense It just don’t stuck to me for more than a second before drifting back into the relentless carnage of the mindless guitars and guttural growls.
From one crow to another I had expected far more from the Crowlord behind Black Crow King. Perhaps it is just a fledgling on its way to fly but somehow I feel that this little bird still lacks the strength to fly. There is just so many things going on that it fails to be anything other than blackened noise and perhaps that may appeal to a few. In the end Black Crow King might be the perfect soundtrack for your friendly local serial killer while chopping up puppies in the basement but even to the experimental metal head it might be a tad bit too experimental.
Rate: 2.5/5
Written by: Skarsnik
Label: Bad God Music (US) / Format: CD / Cat. #: BGM002
Tracklisting:
01. I, Crow
02. The Shadow Falls
03. Vengeance
04. Grotesque Existence
05. Crowbait
06. Excarnation Ritual
