You are familiar with the expectations vs. reality memes, right?
Here’s one for you:
Expectations: Promos sheet that teased brutal death metal like Suffocation and Immolation, with added cinematic atmospheres, keyboards, and tales of brutal torture and serial killers, or specifically ‘a blood-soaked manifesto of riffs, madness, and horror, dragging the listener into a world of pain and cinematic carnage.!!’. and ‘ Those who face this album won’t be spared. CALCRAFT hold themselves to their own brutal standard – and deliver death metal in its most relentless, uncompromising form”.
Fuck me. Talk about a tease!!! I was expecting the likes of Spiritual Deception, The Monolith Deathcult, Agiel, Lykathea Aflame, and Scrambled Defuncts
The Reality: A slightly more brutal version of Germany’s Crematory with songs and lots of samples about serial killers and horror movies.
Now, depending on your view of Crematory and their early, less gothic albums like Transmigration and … Just Dreaming, Calcraft (named after William Calcraft, a notorious English executioner- further teasing something special), that might have some allure for you, and certainly, there are some Ok moments here that fulfill the promise of the promotional information.
But otherwise, Calcraft falls a bit flat and tries a little hard (the imagery, the video above, the gimp masks outfits, etc) to be shocking and brutal, when the music doesn’t quite match up.
Opening satisfying “Satisfying Strangulation” is a perfect example of what’s going on here: a choppy industrial/nu metal riff, warbly synths, a spacey Mithras-y solo, climaxing in an indecipherable blast beat and atonal stomp and no real glimpse of the promotional tease. 1 song in and I am annoyed.
Now, things do get better with the second track, “Fuck Blade.” (Yes, a sample from the movie Seven is used here), where some female choirs randomly show up, and the third track, “Slovakian Carnage”, where some Florida death metal and more extreme melodic death metal, but is still somewhat…. ‘blah’.
After a brief interlude, the last three tracks, “Purest Pain”, “Carving Flesh,” and “Outro”, deliver more of the same underwhelming, average music that isn’t even close to what the promotional materials hinted at, and I’m left pretty disappointed by the band and the album.
