En Naturling Dod
Embrace My Funeral
First off, there’s not much here that you probably didn’t pull out of Anti Cimex’s raped ass 30 years ago. That said, like a high calorie, low nutrition fast food fix, there’s something about Dråp (Manslaughter) that just hits the spot. En Naturling Dod is the Swedish crust punk version of drunkenly plowing through Taco Bell’s drive through window for a quesarito at 2 a.m.
Unlike a lot of their crusty contemporaries, Dråp aren’t appropriating death metal tropes to bulk up and refurbish their punk rawk. They closest these heavily bearded Viking punks come to extra-genre exploration is a nod to thrashtastic chug-a-lug and the occasional squealy guitar solo. So everything barrels along at a more or less consistent head banging nod that makes En Naturling Dod a pretty good driving record. From the black and white artwork straight through the familiarity of the music of itself, Dråp will live and die by how well they can get one more good go-round out of a style that doesn’t lend itself to musical innovation.
With that in mind, the 10 songs on En Naturling Dod are uniformly tight and uniformly ... uniform. (In a rare nod to variety, “Horstmorker” slows down and probably drags out more than is needed.) Dråp have a solid foundation to work with and injecting some solid hooks and a more commanding vocal style could have them nipping at Victims’ heels. What Dråp may lack (or simply not give a fuck about) in originality, they make up for with energy and brevity, pounding through 10 songs in under 25 minutes, playing like the world might end before they finish. It makes En Naturling Dod a head rush of a record and one that can flipped back over for repeated spins. And if you’re asking for more than that from your crust punk records, you’re probably doing it wrong.
[Full disclosure: I received a review copy.]
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