Crowbar – The Serpent Only Lies

[nyrating]

21st October 2016 Markus Falkenberg Album Reviews 0

Crowbar has been going for 27 years already which is quite a long time in the music business. How did they manage this? Not by compromising too much, if at all. At least not in the Heavy Metal scene. By now it should be obvious that Crowbar did not make any compromises on their latest release “The Serpent Only Lies”. Slow, dark and and gloomy Sludge Metal, that’s Crowbar. The songs are so slow that even mid-tempo sequences like in “Falling While Rising” sound way faster than they actually are. Heavyness in slowness so to say. This is not to say that there are no faster parts like in “I Am The Storm”, but they are far and few in between. In fact it seems as if they only exist to make the slower sequences even heavier and darker by comparison for which “The Enemy Beside You” is an excellent example. The beginning is pretty fast, but then comes the slowness that drags you down. So no, the song is not exactly something you really want to listen to while having a good time. Another noteworthy song is “Song Of The Dunes”. It does not provide you with the usual sound carpet that is so characteristic for Heavy Metal, but is rather extremely minimalistic, yet still heavy.

But what about the album as a whole? An album is not just about the individual songs, but rather about the entire collection of songs it stores. Does it take you away? Does it put you through a series of different, probably even contradicting emotions? I am afraid not. It is a good album, but in a way it is also predictable. This is not necessarily a bad thing when done well, but the album is not good enough to overcome this particular issue. Yet it is still a good album! It is not a masterpiece, but it is a good album which means that 7 devils are more than well deserved! I strongly recommend it for any fan of Sludge and Doom Metal!