Carrion Crawler
Rot Crumble Collapse
4.9
First off, it’s important to know that Carrion Crawler are, according to their website, “the original noize-death/street-grind unit.” And about Rot Crumble Collapse the band has this to say: “A very straightforward and aggressive recording, Rot Crumble Collapse contains 12 tracks in under 25 minutes, and is a significant departure from the far more self-indulgent, sample-packed, abstract, noise, concept recordings of the earlier Carrion Crawler that you may be familiar with.” I might be going out on a limb here, but you, kind reader, probably aren’t familiar with anything Carrion Crawler has done, unless you’re from Wheatridge, CO. With that being said…
On Rot Crumble Collapse, Carrion Crawler offers twelve tracks of low budget crust/grind backed by heavily distorted bass and frantic drumming. The vocals are split between a mid-range shriek and barely audible lows of the guttural type. I can only speculate as to the album’s lyrical content, but with a track such as “Sick of All the Bitches in my Hood,” I’m sure they’re quite comical. In keeping with the true spirit of grind, the music is far from technical and played with an appropriate lack of concern for whether or not the listener is impressed. If I had to make a musical comparison I’d place Carrion Crawler somewhere between Phobia and Dystopia, albeit they’re less aggressive than the former and less experimental than the latter (and less awesome than both, but few bands in the genre can compete with either). I’d guess that the people in Carrion Crawler make music more for their own satisfaction than in hopes of getting famous, and I commend them for sending what sounds like a very do-it-yourself album in for review. Has Carrion Crawler done something remotely original here? Not really. At any point did their musical prowess blow me away? Nope. But writing a paragraph of criticism about these guys for making a grind album that probably sounds exactly how they wanted would be silly. That’s right. Silly.
If what I’ve described intrigues you, Rot Crumble Collapse is available for five bucks on the band’s site. Expect a no-frills recording, lots of distortion, and indecipherable lyrics howled over punk guitars on amphetamines. I only wish I could have heard Carrion Crawler when they were releasing sample-packed abstract noise grind, or whatever it was that they did. So long as these guys don’t wear clown masks and worship Slipknot, I’m content to let them keep doing their thing.
