Starkweather: Croatoan

Philadelphia's Starkweather have been on the scene since the early 1990's, and Croatoan is their third full-length release. The band plays a strange mix of styles that include hardcore, math rock, technical death metal, and some psychedelic leanings, and in some cases here on Croatoan they dive into each of these elements in the course of one song, making for a unique listening experience and difficult to classify the band. The opening track for instance goes from hardcore brutality, to jazzy interludes, to some trippy psychedelic spoken word vocals, to intense, almost Cryptopsy-worthy technical death metal. The same can be said for the rampaging death metal meets lounge jazz of 'Taming Leeches With Fire" and song that mixes utterly demonic screams with some laid back crooning, while the music features crushing guitars and bombastic rhythms, as well as moments of avant-garde experimentation.

The band moves into slower and doomier territory on "Slither", complete with bone-crushing guitar riffs and vocals that sound like the singer gargled with broken glass instead of mouthwash. The eight minute "Bitterfrost" sees a return of the clean vocals again while the music chugs along at a textured pace, slowly building in intensity as the guitar riffs start to boil and the entrance off some tribal percussion adds a different flavor altogether. Deep doom rears its head on "Hushabye: Goodnight", while "Verspertilian" and "Machine Rhythm Confessional" keep the grinding and tortured mix of doom and psychedelic rock going strong. The moody and sludge ridden finale "Silken Garotte/The Infinity Coil" contains a myriad of vocal styles, and perhaps has the most passionate clean vocals on the album, along with some lilting guitar chords and pounding rhythms, giving an overall sense of doom and despair.

For the most part, Croatoan works pretty well. I liked the way the different vocal styles worked off each other, as it added a nice dimension to each song. However, after the first couple of tunes, much of the rest of the CD lacked the unique multi-dimensional quality that was prevalent earlier, as the tempos and mood of these songs all remained too similar to each other. Also, while the band seems enormously talented on their instruments, there's very little interplay and almost no solos at all, which would have been nice to break up the monotony that is felt especially on the second half of the CD. In the end though this is a good release from Starkweather, but at times it seems like they are holding back just a little, and only give us glimpses of the truly groundbreaking stuff they are probably capable of.

Track Listing
1) Wilding
2) Taming Leeches With Fire
3) Slither
4) Bitterfrost
5) Hushabye: Goodnight
6) Vespertilian
7) Machine Rhythm Confessional
8) Silken Garotte/The Infinity Coil

Added: March 19th 2007
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Candlelight Records
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Language: english

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