Transcending Obscurity Records without a doubt, top five favorite labels in extreme metal going on right now terms of quality and hearing the most talked about bands in the underground. This time around, we have a new band I have recently discovered awhile back known as Crypts Of Despair and their latest offering All Light Swallowed. Musically, this album has wide influences from Deathspell Omega, Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Anaal Nathrakh, Immolation, Incantation, Belphegor and Portal but for a band like Crypts Of Despair who’s musical style is dark, comprehensive, commendable and dissonant this is one of the most killer releases I’ve heard in 2021 and for someone who enjoyed every band on the roster, this band made me want to hear more releases from their previous catalog.
This album is aesthetic, channeling, diabolical and ferocious which these Lithuanian musicians have studied their homework to unleash their primal fury and understanding the passion and delivery well as compassion giving every song on this album a diverse and dynamic atmosphere that is unreal, yet punctuated. From the songs featuring face-melting aggression, electrifying and eerie ambience giving it a much more blackened, doomy and raw structures to give the album a unpredictable and strangely coherent approach, I am extremely pleased and floored to hear such captivation and giving these characteristics a much more realistic experience rather than seeing many death metal artists copying the same material without making any groundbreaking but for me, Crypts Of Despair seems to do the genre justice.
Songwriting here is absolutely flawless and executed while the tracks are fully demonstrated to give it a nice death doom, almost blackened melodies giving the album’s atmosphere a nice sense of sound and essence to keep coming back upon listening to the album beginning to end just because of the impressive compositional work and instrumentals provided here is well-rounded and extremely high quality end goodness. Just listen to the songs Choked By The Void, Bleak View, Anguished Exhale and The Great End gives these songs a nice variation to balance the instrumentations, production and atmosphere sounding bleak and corresponding which is the biggest highlight for me since there’s no sort of repetitiveness involved but as someone who appreciates the dynamism, heaviness and emotion being poured into the heart and soul for the death metal genre, Crypts Of Despair have rightfully earned themselves a new fan and this is surely gonna be in my top favorite releases of 2021.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
