From Sacred Plague Records, who brought us the excellent Black Hole of Calcutta LP, comes another vinyl slab of filthy, dirty analog crusty metal in the form of Chicago’s self described ‘crustards’, Krang.

As with some other Sacred Plague releases I’m getting familiar with, Krang play a noisy, dirty amalgamation of thrash/crust/punk and death metal that can be directly attributed to other Chicago legends Master and Deathstrike. And vinyl is the perfect outlet for this sound as the rough and ready tones seem to bring the self titled ‘stenchcore’ right out of the vinyl, as opposed to the more clinical CD sound.

As with the Black Hole of Calcutta record, there’s elements of the UK crust/grindcore scene, namely Deviated Instinct, so those looking for a more polished or clean should avoid this, but if you liked last years Bones album (also hailing from Chicago), you should definitely look into this. Sounds of Death doesn’t really require a detailed dissection, it simply doesn’t require that much thought. It’s a gnarly rumbling record full of D-beat trots, throaty growls, loose playing and a whole lot of DIY aesthetics. That being said, a couple of moments stray off the path; the opening couple of minutes of the first track “Black Standards” is a misleadingly delicate few bars of acoustics before the inevitable crusty lurch takes over. Then the penultimate track “Acceptance ; Here at the End of All Things” starts with a spoken word sample before going into some surprisingly  introspective post rock strumming and more spoken words. But, rest assured the rest of the tracks “Sounds of Death”, “The Earth was Blue, but There was No God”, “The Unbearable Wight of Knowing” and “Death of Sounds” ensure the stench is strong with the rest of the (admittedly relatively short at 26 minutes or so) LP that’s a strong addition to the Chicago sound

For those that don’t own a record player there is a bandcamp digital version available, but let’s be honest, this needs to be heard on vinyl and this thing is worth it for the killer Halsey Swain artwork alone.

 

 

[Visit the band's website]

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