ALBUM REVIEW: Black Crown Initiate - "The Wreckage of Stars"

It's rare that a band's debut album stops you dead in your tracks, and rarer still for that debut to be an EP. Black Crown Initiate managed that with last year's 'Song of the Crippled Bull', which has been spun on my MP3 player at LEAST 40 times since I bought it in March of this year. I also went as far as to get the physical copy. Enter their first full length album, 'The Wreckage of Stars'.



In this disc we have a comprehensive summation of this band, what they play, and hints of what may yet come. In many ways they are the Steven Erikson of metal, creating multihued landscapes that are both igneous and nival at the same time, a dichotomy of crushing brutality and haunting melody that paints an essay on the human condition. The ten tracks are jammed with monstrous riffs that veer from impressive technicality to lurching grooves, jammy bass lines and rapid-fire blast beats. The songs are also catchy as fuck. Did I mention that death metal can be catchy as fuck? Well, there it is.

The first song also jams out something I've never encountered in metal; the sitar. 'A Great Mistake' is thoroughly ominous, abounding with brooding threats. Vocalist James Dorton's roar (his main register, alongside higher growls and some higher still screams) is low, but enunciated, and you get the sense that this song is a kaiju risen from the Pacific to lay waste to all of Tokyo. Guitarist Andy Thomas provides the sung vocals, and it's clear that his beard has consumed a thousand infants to sustain what he describes as his 'cherubic tenor'. It has to have done. The thing is massive.

'The Fractured One' and 'The Malignant' both take us through some meaty riffs and melodic passages, but then we hit 'The Human Lie Manifest', one of the heaviest cuts on the album, which is where your face will be fucked clean off. If but sinews remained, now there shall be nothing but white, polished bone. And then there's 'Withering Waves'. Holy shitballs, that chorus. The riff behind it is so simple, the vocal line so powerful and catchy. It's the sound of Caladan Brood unlimbering his hammer and striking the ground.

We do also get a near-instrumental in the title track, and then the last two tracks are comparatively calm affairs that wind you down, lowering you to the floor even as the blade is pulled from your chest. And just like that, it's over.

I've not stopped listening to this since my copy came. Five times in two days, end to end. I can't give an honest score to this either, because I feel that to do so would be disingenuous. So you'll have to make up your own mind here. Suffice to say this will receive a lot of attention from my ears over the coming months.