Crawl – Altar of Disgust (Review)

Crawl are a death metal band from Sweden and this is their second album.

I thoroughly enjoyed 2018’s Rituals, so was pleased when Crawl’s split with Feral appeared last year. They’re now back again with Altar of Disgust, which delivers 31 minutes of crust-driven Swedeath heaviness.

Altar of Disgust is a grisly feast of old-school Swedish death metal, replete with harsh chainsaw riffs and plenty of crust brutality. You’ve heard similar stuff to this countless times before of course, but remarkably that doesn’t lessen Crawl’s impact. They somehow approach the style like it’s fresh and new, even though it’s clearly ancient, morbid, and rotten to the core. Played with passion, no small amount of skill, and packaged up as songs that don’t last long, (only one goes past three and a half minutes), and you have an album that hits hard throughout.

Besides, Crawl’s music does differentiate itself from many Swedeath practitioners, at least to an extent. The band accomplish this by focusing on short stabs of savagery, placing an emphasis on crust and punk belligerence, incorporating a Napalm Death influence into the mayhem, and by displaying an easy talent for writing killer death metal tunes. This is not the sort of Swedish death metal that focuses on macabre atmosphere, emotive melodies, or molten guitar solos. No, Altar of Gore is a vicious predator that goes for the throat with violent intensity. There are touches of atmosphere here and there, but notably, where this is most apparent on mid-album breather Where No Light Escapes is actually where the band take a misstep, as this is an interlude and the closest to filler that the album has. If you ignore this track, Altar of Gore is non-stop, engaging, filth-ridden aggression.

Packed with barbed riffs, serrated hooks, blunt force roars, and brutal heaviness, Crawl have once more impressed. In a sea of generic Swedish death metal clones the band stand out, swinging their massive battle axe from side to side with lethal abandon. Crawl are simply better than most that compete in this crowded arena.