Review: Trap Them - Darker Handcraft

Artist: Trap Them
Title: Darker Handcraft
Format: Full-length
Year: 2011
Label: Prosthetic
Genre: Crust/grind
Rating: 85 / 100

Does Swedish death metal and crust go along? Oh, yes it does! Don't believe me? Just try Trap Them. Trap Them are an American band, which has its roots in both hardcore and death metal music. Mixing these two together sometimes creates grindcore, and sometimes it creates a kind of neo-crust, where Trap Them's sound lays isn't very obvious, probably somehwere in between. There is the early Napalm Death'ish raw brutality, the lovely old-skool Swedish death metal (guitar) sound and some dark crustiness reminding me mostly of bands like Avskum.

Now this style of music definitely isn't something new, actually there's a shitload of bands active in this genre, but for me Darker Handcraft is a fine summary of everything good about the various sub-genres; punch, sheer brutality, agression, a pounding low-end, but everything brought as clear as crystal (thanks to Converge's Kurt Ballou). On regular days I don't listen that much crust/grind/death/whatever, that's why I am really not very interested in a shitload of obscure, often mediocre bands polluting my harddisk/cd-racks, all I need are some terrific albums, delivering me the sound I want to hear on those rare moments, normally Martyrdöd, Skitsystem, Napalm Death, Tragedy or Alpinist would do perfectly fine, but from now on, Trap Them would be very welcome in that tiny list.

Something that will directly catch your attention while listening to Darker Handcraft the first time is the guitar sound, people who just have had a little bit of interest in how Swedish death metal used to sound in the early 90's will probabaly immediately recognize it. It's bascially something that could have been recorded in the famous Sunlight Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. It just gives this album that little extra that makes Trap Them able to distinguish themselves from the giant grey mass of modern (neo-)crust- and grindcore bands.

Darker Handcraft isn't something that will shock the music world for its amazing ability to renew the whole world of extreme music, still, it's just everything about heavy music done in the right manner. Whoever likes both 90's Swedish death metal ánd modern hardcore bands, I would definitely recommend this.

Spring is superduperawes0me, and you know it,

Selwin.