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Crisis: The hollowing
22/07/08 || Daemonomania
If you haven’t heard Crisis already, my best advice would be to grab a blender and throw in the following ingredients:
One dollop of “Shelly” from Evil Dead I
2 tablespoons of experimental post-metal (Neurosis and their ilk)
A pinch of hardcore
A teaspoon of death/thrash
Now add a pint of angry feminism, a dash of tribal/psychedelic influences, a couple of ice cubes, and set that fucker to PULVERIZE. BAM! You’ve just made a Crisis smoothie. While you’re at it, shoot Emeril in the face for being a dickhead and blend him in there too.
That’s been the recipe for this outfit since 1994, with an extra teaspoon of death/thrash when they started and two more pinches of hardcore when the band released their last album in 2004. One thing that has always been consistent about the Crisis concoction, however, is that it is unique. Never will you find your typical banana/strawberry/frozen yogurt/tech death song in their catalogue. I’m running out of smoothie references. I will stop discussing smoothies now and forever.
Trying to be different means that not everyone will get what you’re doing. I’ve read a lot of negative reviews out there from the extreme metal community concerning Crisis’ output over the years. People complain that their music suffers symptoms of one “core” or another, that the band’s frontwoman Karyn Crisis can’t sing in time or at all, and that the music overall just meanders. And to those anonymous reviewers I will simply say that your taste differs from mine. Which logically leads us to the conclusion that your opinion is wrong, o ye faceless mass of Crisis haters. Because I am writing this review, not you.
“The hollowing” finds Crisis at their most experimental, abandoning the more straightforward thrash with some death style of “Deathshead extermination” and leaning more towards a doomy, trippy, more dare I say epic tone. Some of the songs do have a verse/chorus/verse structure, but it is done in such a way that tells you a story while it repeats the formula. Sort of like Johnny Cash’s “Don’t take your guns to town,” wherein a kid goes out to his local saloon for his first drink, and his mother keeps telling him to leave the hardware back at the farm (that’s the chorus). He realizes the value of that advice right after getting blasted by an O.G. cowboy motherfucker that was making fun of him for drinking like a little girl (that story is told in the verses). Shoulda listened to yer mom. She knew you were going to get iced, chump.
Back to Crisis. Karyn’s vocals are generally center stage, and here she avoids doing the high-pitched squeal that was the bane of many from “Deathshead,” instead opting for a more mid ranged throaty bellow. By the way, if you’ve never heard Karyn sing your metal life is not complete. She makes Angela Gossow sound like Morgan Lander. Yes, I had to look that up. She can go from a low growl that would make Frank Mullen shit his pants to a lovely croon that would make Beth Gibbons touch herself. You think her vocal patterns are a bit off-time? Well, so were Sinatra’s, and it is a proven fact that if you talk shit about Sinatra he comes up from the grave and stubs a cigar out in your eyeballs. Operation name-drop complete. The rest of the band ain’t too shabby either, brining everything from double bass frenzy to Middle Eastern guitar freakout.
The highlights are many on “The hollowing.” Personal favorites include the rough opener “Mechanical man,” the spiraling “In the shadow of the sun,” the groovy “The vision and the verity,” the fucking awesome closing section of “Kingdom’s end,” the soothing ambient interlude “After the flood,” and absolute masterpiece “Surviving the siren.” I could write an essay about this song. I did write an essay about this song in college at some point. Great lyrics, great dynamics, great use of music to push the story forward. No, the story isn’t about a bumpkin who gets gatted for being a lightweight – this shit is about beaches of bone, captains being stupid, dudes getting led by their dicks, ships sinking, and general mayhem. And Karyn’s vocals are all over the place – she sounds like a one-woman opera being conducted in hell.
What else can I say? I’ve written too much already. If you dig more straight-ahead stuff, check out “Deathshead extermination,” if you dig more metalcore-ish stuff check out “Like sheep led to slaughter.” If you want to hear a band mixing diverse ingredients to make an exotic and fulfilling dish, then “The hollowing” is for you.
8 sirens survived and albums related to food out of 10.
- Information
- Released: 1997
- Label: Metal Blade
- Website: www.karyncrisis.com
- Band
- Karyn Crisis: vocals
- Gia Chuan Wang: bass
- Fred Waring: drums
- Afzaal Nasiruddeen: guitars
- Tracklist
- 01. Mechanical Man
- 02. In The Shadow of The Sun
- 03. Fires of Sorrow
- 04. Vision and The Verity
- 05. Kingdom’s End
- 06. After The Flood
- 07. Sleeping The Wicked
- 08. Surviving The Siren
- 09. Take the Low Road
- 10. Discipline Of Degradation
- 11. Come To Light
