Entombed - Crawl

ENTOMBED - Crawl (EARACHE - MLP 1991)

And here is something special and something what is really perfect for the current times, when so many bands, so many labels, zines and maniacs adore new bands, which rip the flesh of old styled death metal. It’s special, because even though many, many of these newer bands are totally killer and I support them, still there’s nothing better than the originals! And here is one of these original jewels recorded by one of the most important and greatest death metal bands from the old days. This is “Crawl” EP of Entombed! Not necessarily the most obvious choice from this band (most of maniacs will rather pick up “Left Hand Path” or “Clandestine” or demo plus Nihilist demos), but I suppose that the true collectors of all these ancient death metal relics will have this MLP and will agree that it really is one of the best Entombed releases. Sure, these were quite hard days for the band… they had a killer debut album released, tours were played and all of a sudden a disagreement between LG Petrov and Nicke Andersson happened, what led to the split up with the vocalist. For “Crawl” the band hired Nirvana 2002 vocalist Orvar Safstrom… and you know what? I like his vocals so much that I wish he actually stayed with Entombed for longer, maybe recorded also “Clandestine” with them and later also some other albums… who knows how would the band sound then? But no, Entombed had to hire the useless Johnny Dordjevic, who couldn’t even sing on the album (by the way, I think that Nicke Andersson did good job on “Clandestine”). But that’s another story. Here we’re talking about “Crawl” and yes, for me this MLP, along with “Left Hand Path” is the best stuff, which was released with Entombed logo.
There are just three songs here, but what classics are they! Side A contains the title song and definitely for me it is one of the best songs in the entire Entombed career. So damn vicious, brutal and memorable; so killer riffs and vocal parts! It is a perfect death metal tune! And more so, I must say that I even like this MLP version of it more than the one, which you can find on “Clandestine” album! And then side B contains “Forsaken”, which is kind of exclusive song for this MLP – very good one, indeed, classic Entombed! – and a new version of “Bitter Loss”, which originally appeared on “Left Hand Path”. I’m not really sure for the reasons why Entombed decided to record this song, not something different, but who cares… it is another classic Entombed tune for me and in this version with Orvar on vocals it just kicks ass! And that’s all I really want to say about “Crawl”. It is a fantastic material, quite difficult to get on vinyl, but I really like it a lot and consider it to be one of the best Swedish death metal jewels from the old days.
Final rate: 90/100