Cobra Speed Venom

The Crown is back, and they are pissed. They must have read the reviews of their last full-length, the slightly disappointing Death Is Not Dead, and upon seeing such lackluster reviews, decided to go full-frontal assault on us, an aural blunt-hammer smash to the soul. Cobra Speed Venom is the high-water mark of the band, even surpassing my personal favorite, Crowned in Terror. Honestly, if this is not earmarked for Top Ten Metal Albums of 2018, I shall kill every last one of you. This is not a joke: if this album rates at 11 or lower, I'll fucking kill you.

The Crown is one of those confusing bands that change members, rotate singers in and out, and have an overall line-up akin to the shuffling of a deck. From this, you get high and low albums. There are definitely weak ones, but there are phenomenal releases as well. They've even re-recorded what I believed to be the perfect album--Crowned in Terror--replacing At the Gates' Tomas Lindberg with the original vocalist, called it Crowned Unholy and gave it new artwork. It kills. Deathrace King kills. But this, this is far, far better. I believe this to be their--no pun intended--crowning achievement.

I sort of forgot about The Crown until perusing one day, I saw the artwork. When I saw the album cover, I was impressed. Hyped up, even. The cover artwork, by Christian Sloan Hall,is brilliant, and lends to the notion that you must buy the vinyl edition to get the full savor of the band, to appreciate just what they are about to pummel you with. A wave of dead bodies, clearly deceased from listening to this brutal album, are about to wash over you in every essence, defined or not. The album opens with an eerie set of strings that prelude the madness to begin. "Destroyed by Madness," the opening track thunders with stunning guitars, smash-happy drums--blast beats included--and the iconic voice of the true, original singer, Johan Lindstrand. This is the opener by which other openers measure themselves, trembling in their boots and quaking with raw, fucked-up fear, knowing that their little metal band, their four friends from high school whose mommy bought them a shitty ESP, quite simply, sucks. I don't need to go track by track, this album deserves someone to say the truth: "This is one of the best albums of the year--fuck off and buy it."

And this is what I am saying to you. The Crown is back, they better come to America soon so I can throw money at them and buy merch and leave pissed because Marko didn't throw me a pick. The world of thrash/death is so much improved, and give me so much hope, that I'll not declare metal is dead, never will die, and will only be re-born in truer, wilder states. Songs like "Iron Crown" and "World War Machine" are astoundingly dense...it feels as though metal is inside metal, that there is a band within the band, that we are dealing with super black mass gravity, that this is the finest and most brilliant set of musicians to come down the pike in a long, long time.

I want everyone to buy this album, then give it away. Then do it again. Give it to fans of Mastodon, to fans of Lamb of God and 36 Crazy Fists. Hand it to them, smile, and say: "This, my friends, is metal."