The Crawlian Supremacy

Once I was browsing the pages of my favourite metal webzine (actually I wanted to say my second favourite after Metalzone :-)) and I came across a review of an album from the Soulitude project (guitarist Devo from Spanish power metal act is behind all the music). Power metal isn't really a genre I would particularly like(on the other hand I don't really have a problem listening to it), but the reviewer was totally carried away by the music, so I just couldn't resist listening to it, too. Now I understand why was he so blown away :-)

The album is taken as a conceptual album ... enslavement of human races by a space invaders Crawlians and the consequent rebellion and the way to liberation ... both the lyrics and the music quite well depict this image.

But now let's look at the music itself. Intro doesn't really surprise us with anything exceptional, but nor it bothers us and it's quite well escalated. After the first regular song comes – Enslaved. What an opener it is. Catchy fresh riffs, power metal chorus as it should be (nor Gamma Ray would have to be ashamed if they used it in their songs) ... great piece of music! Likewise with the second song – Menace O The Universe. One catchy riff comes after another, good chorus. Well, I could continue writing in that way about the rest of the album. Every song contains everything you like about power/speed metal, but at the same time it's spiced up by thrash metal and black metal elements. There is also room for experimenting, for example Viking Pride ... powermetal attempt to play something in the vein of viking metal ... Dunes of Mub Arass with oriental keyboards ... instrumental Solar Ghosts ... everything greatly listenable. Every song is different, exceptional and when there is a passage which rather bores, another superb one follows soon. As I hinted before, the album is quite varied and the fact that whole bunch of singers from a multitude of bands contributed with their voices, takes care of the variability, too. You'll hear everything from a murmur to female vocals. The vocals are sometimes a bit suppressed by the instruments, but it's no big thing.

There is nothing to complain about thinking of the composing side and in fact there is not really anything to complain about :-) Nice display of how to spice up well-established power/speed metal methods and create something exceptional. Intentionally I didn't mention another thing which makes this album so great. It's offered free to download with the cover, booklet, lyrics and it's all nicely tagged (what a service). Below you can see the link to the bands site, where the album is to be found in the Discography section. Click, download ... something that good you usually don't get even if you pay for it!

Written for http://www.metalzone.info

Sometimes we find stuff by coincidence or by the random waves of today’s Internet or fate. This album is about to accomplish one year as I’m writing this and it still didn’t get much credit or attention.

Soulitude is a project from the spanish guitarist Jevo, who did two infamous and utterly mad projects with his name (Sign of the Homer and Keeper of the Seven Beers) and plays on Valhalla, a band I certainly didn’t know at all but, by the sound of the stuff you can download from their site, is an extremely good mix of traditional heavy metal with power influences.

It’s amazing the things one can find without expecting them. We keep waiting for releases and read the troubles across the bands and, suddenly, this jewel falls from the sky.

Right, I might be exaggerating.

Ok, what makes this album so good? First of all, it’s free! You read well. Free. No, I’m not joking, you don’t need to sell your soul or anything weird. It is simple as this: you go to Soulitude’s website and download everything in a nicely packed zip. It includes the covers, lyrics and even the album’s ‘sticker’ so you can paste it on a random recordable CD if you want to copy the files that way.

However, the fact that is free doesn’t justify an entire review or the score so here comes what really matters: the music. What does Soulitude offer to the bloodthirsty people, rabid and avid for metal? A lot of good stuff. To speak truthfully, many bands should learn from this guy when it comes to put energy and feeling on a work.

The Crawlian Supremacy is an epic science fiction journey of twelve tracks and one cover (“Fast as a shark” from Accept) with different passages, moods and vocal approaches. It’s a non-stop fest of guitar driven madness flavored with keyboards, a few effects here and there and a good amount of guests to play solos, offer vocals or play other instruments.

A society crushed and being put into slavery by an advanced hi-tech culture is a pretty familiar topic in science fiction. Indeed, The Crawlian Supermacy is partially based on Stargate, which shares a similar concept.

After the typical instrumental intro with a lot of sci-fi components , we are taken to "Enslaved", an interesting track which will instantly make you scream “Gamma Ray rip off!” as the overall concept of the album and the vocals there bring heavy reminiscences of Gamma’s Somewhere Out in Space and Powerplant. This is enforced by speed of the drums and the riffing; however, they somehow feel fresher in comparison.

About the drums, it is needed to point out that they are programmed. Not a tragedy really as in these days everyone and their mothers use computers for almost everything and, sometimes, little traces of the original instruments are left under the insane layers and multilayers of effects. They accompany the music without annoying and, sooner rather than later, you forget about this point.

Anyway, going back into the songs, the Gamma Ray feeling stays mainly in “Enslaved” as the rest goes literally mad, both in terms of english pronunciation and vocals, which includes a mixture of clean voices and growls to add variety.

Each song has its own good points. There aren’t really any bad or forgettable tracks here. They all feature interesting melodies, catchy choruses, good guitar work (both in terms of riffing and solos), especially in the lead guitar, which exudes power. At times it can get too catchy as in “Menace of the Universe” or “Dunes of Mub Arass” (“Time has cOme for revolution!”, yeah, the “o” is pronounced the spanish way but, what the hell, the song is fast and good), but the crunchy guitars stay around to keep the heaviness, even with keyboards taking control of some parts and reminding you the sci-fi ‘concept’.

A metalized and short version of the infamous Imperial March of Star Wars is featured in the song “March of the Crawlians”, a strange addition that I’m not sure many people might welcome but serves for the purpose of the song.

So, here we have the high point of the album, its core: the combination of a lot of styles and vocal approaches with an extravagant concept to obtain something unusual. They do not fear using dozens of growls and low tone voices to balance the typical high-pitched powermetalesque singing style. In fact, they add a blunt and strong effect, often called “balls”.

The cover art and general image treatment of the graphic material are both pretty good (the alien looks like something right out of Starcraft but with the Stargate Egyptian feeling) and the lyrics are fine too, though not superb or anything to go crazy about.

So, as a final advice: granted, it might not be a real revolution or the last revelation of existence but it’s damn good, well produced, effective and, to put the last jewel on the crown, made with passion. Oh, and do I need to repeat it again? It’s free!

Highly recommended and worth downloading!