Crackdust - Dented Reality

[Life Sucks]

I have a strange interest in bands from obscure countries. So naturally, when I heard about the full length debut from Botswana’s Crackdust, I thought I’d check it out. I wasn’t expecting much, and this album turned out to be much much better than I expected.

Surprisingly, the production is perfect. And by perfect, I don’t mean the uber polished Pro Tools production that is so widespread amongst death metal bands today. The production is more akin to that of early 90s death metal, which is a good thing. It is clear without sounding overly digital, so there is no muddiness, yet there is also no artificial sounding plastic modern sound. The guitars are downtuned, and the guitar tone is thick and bassy, and quite heavily distorted.

Not only does the production sound like early 90s death metal, but in terms of songwriting, this is also pure early 90s dm. Again, this a good thing in my opinion. There is a nice mix of chunky palm muted riffs and tremolo riffs, and the music is for the most part mid paced and crushing. Blastbeats are used sparingly, but drummer Dlax proves that he can blast if he so chooses on songs such as Ruptured and Desecrate. Occasionally, melodeath-like harmonized high guitars are thrown in atop the low end riffage, but it doesn’t sound anything like Gothenburg, and the music retains a pure old school death metal sound during such passages. Born of the Sorcerer, Deranged Psychopath, and Son of Rosobola are good examples of this. The music is not overly technical, but rather straight to the point bone crushing death metal, and is often as catchy as hell.

As a big fan of old school death metal, I can’t help but like a well done retro dm album such as this. The songwriting is good, and the music is pretty easy to get into. It is catchy without sounding cheesy or melodic in a Gothenburg sense. The one weakness this album has is that many of the songs are too short. Sometimes the songs seem to end abruptly and unnaturally, as if you were expecting the song to go on, and then wonder “that’s it?” I would recommend this album to fans of old school death metal. It’s available for download for a small price on the band’s website, and worth every penny.