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CROWN THE BEAST
Spawn Of Tomorrow

Self-released (2022)
Rating: 6/10

I don’t like band names that sound like song titles, but do I like the music? Well, this debut full-length opus from Danish five-piece Crown The Beast is hard hitting death-cum-groove metal, but it’s also an album where the novelty wears off quickly. There’s only so much mechanical, and derivative mimicry I can put up with and the throaty barks of Jason Campbell just irritate all too quickly. However, I can see the contemporary kids digging this masculine opus.

At times the riffs are catchy, but this is very much macho metal that’s all too clinical and chest-pounding to be considered death metal. Crown The Beast opts for a much colder, concise approach instead of going for the more direct and predictable death metal mouldiness, but that just leaves me being battered by a rather soulless machine that chugs, shifts and grooves like something from 20 years ago when bands of this ilk were reaching into more contemporary designs.

When one hears a track such as ‘Deathecration’ it’s difficult not to laugh in spite of its apparent ability to flatten those not expecting such barrages. It’s steady, shouty, angst-ridden, guttural and grey, but it’s only the guitar tone that I’m willing to grip and ride along with.

Spawn Of Tomorrow is littered with stark, pallid sections and sprigged with melody too although it’s never welcoming, merely humourless and bleak and all the while leaning towards those modern day death metal nuances while remaining generic in its extremity. It’s just difficult for me to get excited about these types of precisely engineered heaps of well-polished gruelling.

Neil Arnold

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