Style: mathcore / sludge / noise (harsh vocals)
Review by: Josh
Country: Poland
Release date: 08 October, 2021
Above all, KRZTA’s sound is uncompromising. It is the soundtrack to the bloody massacre that is a viking raid, and not the idealized, fantastical version that most of us prefer to imagine. Bodies are haphazardly strewn about, death looms indiscriminate, and what was once a thriving town full of life is now fire and ash. KRZTA seek nothing other than to pursue the most brutal and aggressive sound possible. The closest point of reference to their style is Primitive Man. Both groups have drained as much hate from metal as possible to the point where they’ve completely depleted it, incorporating elements of noise to further punish the listener. Where Primitive Man opt to slow down, however, KRZTA hit the gas, playing most of their songs at an absolute breakneck pace. It’s the auditory equivalent of being trampled under foot by a crash of rhinos.
The intense, paranoid, and apocalyptic vibe of KRZTA’s music would be impossible to create with a different singer. Their screams are frantic, sounding like Joe Duplantier being pursued by a hitman. This is backed by some of the year’s heaviest riffs and the most gigantic bass tone I’ve heard in a while. I’ve heard of filling out the low end, but this is next level. There’s no room whatsoever for the addition of anything else in the bass frequencies of most songs on this release, yet everything is still perfectly hearable. The result is a perfectly realized wall of sound that acts as the ultimate platform for the vocalist to rave their rantings from the top of.
KRZTA aren’t just aggressive, though. They also possess a great understanding of dynamics, which they effectively utilize to make an already brutal album hit that much harder. Sometimes they slow down, such as on the doomy “masa”, which slowly builds over the course of five and a half minutes until its fake-out ending, where it strips down to just bass and drums but then dials down the tempo even more and hits you with a guitar tone so thick that it devours everything else on the mix. The band also possesses a great understanding of how to use odd time signatures to add to a song. Odd rhythms here are used as instruments of fear; instead of coming across as mere added technicality, they just feel wrong. They force the listener to think in the midst of an album that should in theory be all feel, throwing them off guard and priming them to be hit even harder by the heaviest moments once they come.
ŻÓŁĆ.NISZCZENIE.ZGLISZCZE isn’t perfect, though; while KRZTA very obviously know what they’re doing, they still have holes in their experience. On the longer songs, they seem to lose their songwriting edge. While they’re still packed with individually great moments, they’re not all there as a whole. By far the worst offender here is the 9-minute “suma”, which does not do nearly enough to justify its length. It feels haphazardly assembled, with a heavy ending that comes in after absolutely zero buildup, popping up all of a sudden after a fadeout. The rest of the song, too, feels far less coherent than the others on the album. It’s not tightly written, no; it barely seems written at all.
This is not nearly enough of a flaw to make me dissuade listening to this album, though. Nothing like this has dropped all year, and I’d be pretty surprised if anything did in 2022 either. The majority of songs on this album are quite well-written, and even when they’re not they’ll still beat you within an inch of your life. If you’re looking for maximum heaviness, nothing will hook you quite like this.
Recommended tracks: istota, sznur, masa
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Primitive Man, Car Bomb
You may also like: Humavoid
Final verdict: 8/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Piranha Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
KRZTA is:
I legitimately cannot find this out, if someone knows please tell me
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