Stormcrow

Enslaved in Darkness (2005)

feeeding5000

Well, it's another month, and so we're all loooong overdue for another scum-drenched review from feeeding5000. I've been ever so excited about my triumphant return to Punknews reviewing, so you guys better be pumped.

Now, I think that I'm really more of a fan of the idea of crust than the actual sound of it. I like to think that any band that, say, covers a Rattus song, is pretty sweet. In practice, this usually just ends up being a bunch of hairy, smelly white males, who complain about how hard their lives are, and that there's gonna be a nuclear war. Seriously guys, it's been 60-odd years we're waitin' for that flash…

Stormcrow, a Bay Area Amebix-style crust band (not to be confused with the Italian black metal band Stormcrow), actually succeed in the punktology department. Rather than trying to paint a goddammn picture with words, and create an actual description of the sound, I'm just gonna compare it to two bands all y'all crustaceans should know: Deviated Instinct covering Amebix songs. That's it. It's got heavy, metallic guitar, based on riffs -- not basic chord progressions -- and unintelligible, guttural vocals about the end of the world.

And you know what? That's just fine with me. It's okay if a band is totally uninspired – just so long as it's good. To put Stormcrow in Orgcore terms, they're like Kid Dynamite: stealing from two bands (it's just Gorilla Biscuits and Screeching Weasel, folks…don't kid yourselves) to make something very listenable.

There's only five songs on this full-length, which is odd, but then again, two of them are seven minutes long. The album art is done by Mid, guitarist and sometimes vocalist for Deviated Instinct. This is much more memorable than the average crust album, so it's worth picking up if you're in the mood for some state-smashing. And uhh…up the punx.