Craft – Void (Carnal/Southern Lord Records)
I've got to hand it to Craft. Black metal was never short on nihilism or misanthropy, but this band has employed a wider-angled lens of hatred than most – that their previous album was titled Fuck The Universe offers a succinct summation of where they're coming from, just as the title of their newest could be seen as the logical extension of the universe having been thoroughly fucked. Some metal bands hate religion, some hate humanity, but attempting to negate the universe as a totality is no small undertaking. And while I can't say with any certainty how successful the band might be in their void-inducing and universe-fucking, they have, if nothing else, come up with a solid black metal album that's completely devoid of the extraneous trappings for which many of their contemporaries have fallen.
The only element that differs appreciably from their previous output is the recording quality; whereas earlier efforts were very much beholden to the murky fidelity of early Scandinavian black metal, the newest has a clear recording that gives the material some heft, and helps the album achieve a heaviness that black metal often lacks. Some purists may cry foul, though Craft's rising popularity (they made Sweden's top ten charts) would likely end with similar results anyways. The music hasn't really shifted gears at all, however. The band is still reliant on largely mid-tempo Darkthrone worship, with only two short detours into dark ambient territory – the album's opening track, and the beginning of its title song. But aside from those brief deviations, there is no keyboard, no clean singing, no shoegaze parts, not even that many guitar solos. And the solos that are present, such as the one towards the end of “Bring On The Clouds,” tend to shy away from the flashy instrumental pyrotechnics normally featured in such songs, instead relying more on an off-kilter, ponderous dissonance. Forsaking extraneity, the album is a sonically monochrome pummeling that doesn't abate or rely on cheap tricks. But in hands as capable as Craft's, the music is run through with a gleeful nihilism that may not be subtle, but is certainly effective.
This lack of subtlety is a point that can't really be reiterated enough with an album like Void. Its best song is called “I Want To Commit Murder,” for fuck's sake. But this is nothing new for the band, just as the larger components of their sound are neither new for them nor for their genre. When utilized by certain bands, this reliance on the tried-and-true would be a dismal failure, an attempt to cling to some perceived past glory that's never anything but ephemeral. In Craft's case, however, their singularity of purpose seems more like another tier on the monument to disgust and malevolence that they have been building from solid bedrock for some years now. There is not a single surprise present on Void, but it's likely better that this is the case.