Denmark never has a shortage of quality bands and Crocell return with their fourth long player, in their relatively short existence.  I had never heard of them until last year when Deepsend Records label owner, Graham recommended them to me.  I picked up their discography from him and have been a happy camper ever since.  The band is listed on metalarchives as playing melodic death metal.  It’s a tad misleading.  While Crocell definitely has their fair share of melody they throw in, they play a very crunchy, pretty brutal form of death metal.  If you like other Danish bands like Dawn of Demise, Spectral Mortuary, Corpus Mortale etc… Crocell are for you.

Prophet’s Breath opens with the brutal “Tyrant of Iron”, that does have some nice dual guitar melodies that are played over some brutal blast beats.  “Kingdom of Corruption” is a personal fave since it begins with a vicious brutal groove.  Vocals are outstanding, throaty, powerful and understandable.  3.30 has some nice double bass drumming, drum fills over guitar melodies and soloing.  A massive head banger of a tune, as we have come to expect from Crocell, with these types of tunes.  “Usurper” is brutality to the max. It opens with a killer guitar part before ripping into a vicious blast beat.  The guitar riff played over the blast beat is catchy.  The 1:10 part gets into a stop/start groove, that eventually gets into a guitar solo then goes back to the stop/start part and then returns to blasting away, like the beginning.  This song is short, pummeling and one of my favorite the band has done up to this point.

The production is top notch.  The musicianship is outstanding and the band has a stable line-up, over their last 2 releases, now.  All instruments breathe, nothing overtakes the other and a very nice audible bass sound resonates throughout.  Crocell continue to churn out not only quality music, but a standout in death metal releases for 2015.  The cd is nicely layed out with lyrics and pics.  My only gripe is the album cover scan/artwork is kinda bush league looking.  Deepsend Records scored with this band, big time, as they did with their pick-up, last year of Sickening Horror.  Prophet’s Breath is as good as the bands earlier releases, yes, maybe a tad more melodic, this time around, but trust me, plenty of bludgeoning throughout.  Buy or take a “Cross to your Grave”, and be sure to invert it!!

[Visit the band's website]

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