Album Review: The Crawling – All Of This For Nothing
Reviewed by Richard Oliver
'All Of This For Nothing' is the new album from Northern Ireland doom trio The Crawling who are a band who have definitely been making a name for themselves the last few years with a steady stream of recorded material, plenty of shows and support slots and an absolutely crushing performance at the 2021 edition of Bloodstock Open Air Festival.
It’s business as usual for the band on album number three with their combo of death-laden doom metal but this is definitely the most accomplished, mature and strongest album that the band have released to date.
The band mix death metal passages with slow doomy sections and gothic metal undertones but the songwriting is just more polished and confident and the band really seem to have perfected their sound here taking the formula on previous albums “Anatomy Of Loss” and “Wolves And The Hideous White” and fine tuning it. This can really be heard on songs such as ‘Another Vulture’ and ‘Bound To The Negative’ and there are subtle and brief inclusions of some clean vocals on songs such as ‘Thy Nazarene’ and ‘Leaving The Skin’ which are very effective. The album is packed with atmosphere and melancholy but this is accompanied with a strong backbone of metal riffing from guitarist Andy Clarke and a strong rhythm section from bassist Stuart Rainey and drummer Gary Beattie.
Whilst 'All Of This For Nothing' is definitely the best work that The Crawling have released to date, it still suffers like the previous two albums in that the material isn’t the most memorable. There are definitely strong moments but the songs aren’t ones that will necessarily stick with you after listening. For dark atmosphere and bleak sounding metal then 'All Of This For Nothing' ticks plenty of boxes but it lacks the memorability of a lot of the bands who clearly influence these guys. A solid album of death doom metal but you won’t be humming the songs afterwards. Then again is doom meant to be catchy? Decide for yourselves…
