.CRRUST — Pain is a Mere Sensation (review)

.CRRUST — Pain is a Mere Sensation album cover

Album · 2007 · Mathcore

3.5/5 · 2012-09-03
renkls

Lost in Translation: The music edition.

"Irresistible to some Annoying to others Driven by the winds Caught inside the fins Relying on weather To smooth out the leather On you

Only to soak and freeze the triggered hands like frozen brush ends dipped in red paint dripping down as they thaw forming figures out of splashes turning back to shatters of dried blood

Irresistible to some Annoying to others Driven by the winds Caught inside the fins Relying on weather To rip out your studs"

I'm not well versed in mathcore, so to an outside observer, I'd describe the style as aggressive technical prog rock with an emphasis on complexity and angry expression. At least, that's what rubbed off on me from this album.

This is a single track composition released in 2007 from .crrust, a russian band that disbanded shortly after its release. You could say they considered it their magnum opus, or at least their grand statement.

As you may have noticed, I begun my review with a segment of the lyrics from the 44 minute track, and yes, these are the real lyrics. Rather then singing in their native language, they transitioned to english lyrics for this album, and to detrimental effect in my opinion. Read them in their entirity online and you get the sense of broken and quite inept poetry, devoid of the nuances that are probably present in Russian, and which the band presumed would come across language barriers. In this album, the lyrics absolutely ruin the feeling, though I'll admit, sometimes they perfectly match the mood of the piece, which is ever changing.

This album structure reminds me of Scald's Vermiculatus, which is another one track album, that uses its first half as performance and the second as atmospheric and more for introspective effect. as such, this album is dominantly mathcore for the first half, before evolving slowly into a kind of noisy jam session, then to an industrial piece with ambient influence. The second half is almost all instrumental as well, so the misguided lyrics only take up the first half.

I'm not sure which part I enjoy more, as each has merits and disadvantages. The first half suffers through the lyrics, the second in that it borders on almost annoying minimalism, being frustrating for an uninitiated metal fan to say the least. There's no climax so to speak, except to close the first half, so the second half feels lacking/directionless a lot of the time. It's not bad, but it's not fantastic. I think that's what can be said here.

The first half has plenty of radical influences thrown into the mix, hence my perception of it as a progressive rock inspired piece. It's not flat out intense mathcore without a break, it has calmer parts where the lyrics fit perfectly, and it resembles some form of post-rocky melody. There's some jazzy interludes as well.

Overall, this is an interesting album, brought down in rating because of its lyrical mishaps, as well as a daunting 20 minute coda (second half) which can be draining. Worth checking out at least once though.