Feral/Crawl – Made as Those Who Are No Longer Alive – Split (Review)

This is a split between two Swedish  death metal bands – Feral and Crawl.

Feral are up first; two songs, with a total duration of seven minutes.

Feral open with From the Ancient Tombs, a song packed with riffs and chainsaw heaviness. It’s a song which grooves with confident belligerence and has a danceable swagger that’s infectious. It’s relentless and underpinned by a punk intensity that’s nicely energetic.

After that comes Released from the Bondage of the Earth, a faster cut that has a nasty bite. It’s a good showcase for Feral’s blend of forceful presence and aggressive attitude. This is my favourite out of the band’s two songs, and leaves me with a good impression of Feral’s abilities.

Now we have Crawl; two songs, with a total duration of four minutes. I really liked 2018’s Rituals, and as this is the first material we’ve had from Crawl since then, I’ve been looking forward to hearing it.

Where the Dead Flesh Whispers wields crust brutality like a weapon. It’s short and ugly, delivering rusty chainsaw riffs and harsh grim hostility. It channels old-school Entombed by way of hardcore violence, resulting in a song that just destroys.

Following this comes the even shorter and uglier Vanity, a track that takes no prisoners. Raging with crust-powered extremity and jagged death metal heaviness, this is a sub-two-minute lesson in how to craft death metal that gets straight to the bloody point.

Feral’s side of the split demonstrates a band that knows what they’re doing, but it’s Crawl that are the main treat here for me. It’s great to hear them again, and I can’t wait for more in the future.