RED ON CHROME

"Red on Chrome" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish, Malm' based extreme metal act Crowpath. The album was released through Willowtip Records in USA and Earache Records in Europe in April 2004. Crowpath has existed since 1997 and released a couple of minor releases before releasing "Red on Chrome".

Stylistically Crowpath play an incredibly intense, chaotic, and dissonant type of extreme metal. The vocals on the album are aggressive shouting type hardcore vocals and although there are some death- and grindcore traits to be found in the music, it's not right to call it neither. This is definitely not your typical one-dimensionally blasting type grindcore release and certainly not you're standard death metal release either. So maybe technical/chaotic extreme metal is a better overall description of the band's music. The music is very complex and technically very well played, with constantly shifting drum patterns, breaks, and tempo changes. A schizophrenic sounding, 'ber distorted, and dissonant wall of noise. The word "noise" should be interpreted as something positive in this respect, just so I'm not misunderstood. The atmosphere is bleak and aggression is in the high seat.

"Red on Chrome" is not an easy album to get into, and the distorted and noisy sounding production probably won't help someone challenged by the already chaotic nature of the music. The music and the sound production suit each other well though and a more clean sounding production probably wouldn't have suited the music in the same way.

Overall the high energy level, the chaotic soundscape, and the complexity of the playing are sure to challenge even seasoned extreme metal listeners. 13 tracks distributed over a 29:59 minutes long playing time and then the mayhem is over and you'll probably be left exhausted, bruised, and broken. I dare you to jump aboard this one-way ticket to hell. Repeated listens over several years have convinced me to buy said ticket and a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.