REVIEW: Crypt Rot - "Embryonic Devils" EP

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 28/04/2017

Label: Southern Lord

Just like Carcass, the guys in Crypt Rot are able to fuse stomach churning lyrics with memorable hooks.  In a mere twenty minutes, Crypt Rot manage to express their love of classic death metal, while embracing the disparate influences that may ultimately set them apart and above their peers.

“Embryonic Devils” DD//LP track listing

1. Segue

2. Chapters of Torment

3. Scaphist Waste

4. Coffin Birth: Postmortal Fetal Extrusion

5. Pit of Morbidity

6. Internal Organ Feast

The Review

               

Ohio is a strange place.  Ostensibly along the northern border of the United States, I’ve driven through it many times to see arrays of Confederate flags, pro-union bumper stickers, heard speakers blasting underground hip hop or seen punishing anarcho-punk shows in squalid basements.  Part of the so-called “flyover country”, it sits as a crossroads of urban and rural cultures.  Like many of these liminal spaces, it churns out fucked up outsider art at an alarming rate.

Take, for instance, Ohio’s Crypt Rot and their debut EP, “Embryonic Devils”.  Ostensibly a death metal band featuring members of Homewreckerand Scorched, Crypt Rotis simultaneously nostalgic for a simpler era of early death metal and an exercise in genre cherry picking.  Opening track “Chapters of Torment” fuses chaotic, borderline thrash riffing with hardcore breakdowns before culminating in ethereal, choral vocals that evoke the Fabrio Frizzi scores of Italian splatter classics.  “Scaphist Waste” ups the energy, pushing the limits of Izzi’s double bass assault, while “Coffin Birth: Postmortal Fetal Extrusion” highlights the melodic riffing of Sposito and DeDedemonic – like Carcass, the guys in Crypt Rot are able to fuse stomach churning lyrics with memorable hooks.

Yet it’s the latter half of the record, “Pit of Morbidity” and “Internal Organ Feast”, that got me most excited for Crypt Rot’s future.  Segueing from death metal riffs/growls to eerie acoustic guitars and Dioneff’s vocals, I was once again thinking of cult films like Just Before Dawn or The Burning, where the most pastoral moments often presage the most horrific events.  There are scads of bands churning out extreme metal, but few can pull of the tonal or genre shifts and maintain atmospheric consistency.  In a mere twenty minutes, Crypt Rot manage to express their love of classic death metal, while embracing the disparate influences that may ultimately set them apart and above their peers; it would be thrilling to see this play out across a future full length.  Until then, I’ll keep my eyes firmly set towards the rotted heartland, to see what fresh horrors Crypt Rot can summon next.

“Embryonic Devils” is available here

Band info: facebook|| bandcamp