Review Summary: They're right, this really does belong in the grave.
Every single genre of music has its fair share of trash. For every 5 groundbreaking bands you’ll have 10 that aren’t worth a damn. Deathcore is a genre where the trash gets put under a microscope. I personally have loved the recent trend of symphonic, blackened deathcore a la bands like Mental Cruelty, Ov Sulfur and even Carnifex experimenting with their sound. Crypts of Despair sadly fall into the category of bland, uninspired and almost completely devoid of redeeming qualities. I'm not at all familiar with their prior output but apparently they had been making kickass blackened death metal before this, which makes this album even more of a bad surprise. I can imagine the shock and horror of people that were already fans of Crypts of Despair when they finally heard THIS album.
We Belong in the Grave is an album that is almost as laughable as the name itself and is everything wrong with modern deathcore. Each and every track is a lifeless, mid-tempo chug fest that sounds identical to the one that came before it. There’s no variation at all. There’s no cheesy synths to throw a wrench into the mindless sea of breakdowns. The production is overbearing, trying to emphasize the “riffs” but it just ends up coming off as too sterile. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve heard a metal album that the riffs were so boring and uninventive and the production so obviously bombastic to the point of sterilization.
The one good thing that I can say about this band/album is that the vocals here are absolutely insane. They too are a bit one note, but they’re so powerful and aggressive that it doesn’t matter. The guttural assault sounds like it’s coming from deep into the bowels of Satan’s private quarters. They’re so bat*** crazy at times that it almost makes you forget about how terrible everything else sounds.
I didn’t start getting too heavy into deathcore until the past 2(ish) years, but I’ve come across some real gems. Some albums that have been underrated for years and have just now come to light for me personally.
We Belong in the Grave does not fit in with the greatness that I’ve discovered. This album is the epitome of generic deathcore. If you have a 9 song album spanning the length of 35 minutes, you need at least SOME variation. 35 minutes isn’t so long of a runtime that every second has to sound the same. Every single riff, breakdown, drum section sounds identical to all the others here. If it wasn’t for the vocals, this would be a completely useless album. Even so, it’s still pretty damn useless.
