It is a record that swallows you whole almost immediately. Oh those drums. This right here is demanding you understand it’s big. Not since, maybe,
Precambrian, has an album tried so god
damn hard. Seriously. Crib445998877 understands this though. They play a hefty hand with their intro and are so able to capitalize on it, it makes you wonder where they’ve been all along. And then a tantalizing doom romp before the album begins anything worth standing up about introducing a rather brutal affair. The music is demented with dark twisted riffs and hides no sense of the word dense.This may be the most important band to follow ISIS. Big words. I know. Get over it.
Cribs most impressive feature is in their handling of the reins. Betweens shifts in atmosphere and heavy metallic passages the band has a knack for sticking to what it knows best. Coming in loud, “Fading Hope”, and staying there. This is never even a minor complaint when it comes to to
Marching Through the Borderlines, as Crib5912 are so adept in making “post” metal move fast enough within their grooves. Considering how swiftly the album moves for the first half of its seventy-five minute length is a testament to how structured the album actually is. Nothing feels repeated; and every f
ucking time Teemu Mäntynen’s vocals kick in, it indeed feels like a kick.
But let’s start from the beginning. “Gathering the Storms” is a very defiant opener. It’s loud. No, seriously it’s loud. And it means so only to introduce the notion that the band is heavy. I’m not sure there was a more devastating, and I use that word devastating intentionally, way to open an album and then to maneuver from it so smoothly. Its bleak cover suggesting a heavy clearance - a wipe out - feels mirrored in how progressively dark the album feels. By the time “Into the Abyss” enters ones not entirely sure if they’re listening to the same album. Much like the album it inhabits this song feeds to fester. This isn’t to suggest the albums turns rotten. No. This album has a bite around a corner you weren’t even aware you were taking.
The brilliance here is containing these moments. To discuss them would ruin them. You have to
hear that f
ucking scream in “Into the Abyss”.They’re deep. They crack. But more importantly they deliver this albums intention of a void. No deliverance. Consider
Panopticon and how there always was a light touch to their depression. Crib98° crushes that. They build beautifully with a melody in hand that rivals their predecessors but this band is not concerned with delivering a merry ending. It’s more
Fall of Efrafra. Everything eventually crumbles and you feel it. “Into the Abyss” builds into such a fantastic conclusion that it’s easy to forget the world may be ending in their world.
I suppose it would be natural to say this all culminates and, I mean the last track is called “Transcending”...
