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Hello kiddies! The other Ryan (formerly Woody) here. This week I had the great privilege of sitting down with Ryan v1.0 and C0NN0RB0T to discuss one of 2020’s eleventh-hour monster releases, the new LP Survival/Sickness by Crowning.
Though it doesn’t break the 20-minute mark, this record expertly blends black metal spaciousness into Crowning’s pounding hardcore-tinged skramz. The melodic guitars wind up the emotion in the songs, only to release it in sudden flurries of heavy drumming and wrenching shouts like a spring-loaded bear trap snapping shut. Plus there’s plenty of potty-humor weirdness to turn your stomach, so toke up, turn it up, and let this record snap against your eardrums.
Crowning is a five-piece skramz/(melodic) hardcore outfit from Chicago, IL. Their debut EP Funeral Designs definitely fucked my shit up when it dropped in 2017. Their next two releases, a split with Swallows Nest in 2018 and another with Marée Noire in 2019, saw the band move towards darker, uglier tones, making their LP an interesting synthesis of melody and madness. Crowning demonstrates more maturity, growth, and fearlessness with each new record, and I am certain you will find something within these eight tracks to delight or destroy you, whatever you fancy.
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You can stream Survival/Sickness on Bandcamp or Spotify, or grab yourself a physical copy via the almighty Zegema Beach Records. For all things Crowning, follow them on Facebook and Instagram @crwning.
If you’d like to support us beyond listening to our podcast, you can do so by becoming a patron on our Patreon page. There you can read all of our notes for each album review episode we publish and gain early access to every episode before its official release.
Also, if you’re keen on chatting music, shooting us some recommendations, or talking about other forms of media (videogames, films, etc.), please feel free to join us on our Discord server (it’s a desolate tundra currently, but you can help enliven it). In next week’s episode, we’ll be chatting about four fresh EPs from the weirdo melodi-grind quintet Beaten to Death that dropped at the tail end of 2020. The title, Laat maar, ik verhuis naar het bos, roughly translates to Never mind, I’m moving to the forest.
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