Void

Anything starting with a piece called "Intro (John's Nightmare)" had better be some sort of properly pissed-off metal or there's just not really a point. Thankfully, Sweden's Craft bring just that on their fourth album, Void, with the kind of combination of strutting thrash, rasped black metal vocals, and general noise and atmosphere that is simultaneously exactly familiar and perfect for being so, right down to the time change and shift in the lead guitar riff on "Serpent Soul." Moments like the choppy flange treatment to the opening guitar on "Come Resonance of Doom" add just enough disorientation to the stately progression, while a song title like "Succumb to Sin" or "The Ground Surrenders" really couldn't be more apt. The fact that they don't really try to do blastbeats as such on that latter song until the very end -- and even then in more of a subdued fashion, not even as full-on texturing -- gives a sense as to the limits they allow themselves to test. Hints of rollicking boogie lurk here and there but it's more apt to say that there's a kind of exuberant joy in all the evil noise throughout -- even with the lengthy, brings-it-all-to-a-head title track that concludes the album on one last aim for the epic heights, you get a sense of a band doing this not just because it's out to create a mood but because there's actually something fun about it all. Which there is, of course -- unless they're deadly serious about the sentiments in the title of "I Want to Commit Murder," but that seems more like something that both the Happy Flowers and the Frogs would approve of. ~ Ned Raggett