Genre : Noise rock, Goth rock, Mathcore
Released : August 12nd, 2022
Label : Self-release (?)
FFO : Daughters, Chat Pile, Type O Negative
Crippling Alcoholism is a brand new project formed by Tony Castrato (Nursing) and Danny Sher (Horse Torso).
For those who have been following the page for a while, you might remember me featuring Horse Torso and their avant-jazz infused with mathcore back in 2020; and although Crippling Alcoholism is a completely different beast stylistically and Danny's drumming here is more "conventional", his disembodied style of drumming influenced by his free-jazz background resurfaces on some of the more mathy segments and play a huge part in building this album's strong sense of anxiety-inducing uneasiness.
Twangy, delayed layers of dissonant guitars highly reminiscent of Daughters reverberate and play around the angular drumming while bursts of bass occasionally boom their way into the songs to accentuate some of the album's heavier passages in a way that reminded me of Chat Pile's approach to bass in their songwriting.
All these instrumental elements already paint a dreary painting once put together but the painting only truly comes alive as soon as Tony Castrato's vocals use this canvas to weave dark disturbing tales that showcase different situations in which some of the most pitch black corners of the human behavior and psyche are highlighted in stories of vengeance, murder, addiction and suicide.
Tony's vocals alternate between a deep, low breathy singing voice which recalls the late Peter Steele's (Type O Negative) unmistakable tone, a higher singing voice that carries this sense of charismatic gravitas you could find in classic popular singers like Frank Sinatra or more contemporarily, Nick Cave.
Then of course, there are also the occasional outbursts of harsher vocals which are most of the time harmonized with a pitched down layer of the same vocal take which adds even more to the odd, uneasy feeling that emanates from this somber record.
Overall, Crippling Alcoholism have crafted an incredibly strong debut that weaves a believable world of gloomy nihilism by masterfully combining elements of noise rock, goth rock and mathcore to create a singular, creative body of work that flows incredibly well from start to finish and leaves you wanting more in spite of how thematically heavy of a record it can be.
Between this release and Chat Pile's "God's Country" during the same month it feels like we're getting the soundtrack to the downfall of our world in real-time as we go through what on some days feels like a slow-burning apocalypse, but hey : at least the music is great!
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