Lost in a Grave

This 7" on Morbid Records is Fleshcrawl's first release under that name. Both songs on this EP later appeared on their debut full-length for Black Mark, and in my opinion they sound much better there; but the vinyl is still cool to have because here the songs appear in their most basic and raw form.

If you're already familiar with "Descend Into the Absurd", then one of the first things you'll notice about "Lost in a Grave" is the poor production. The vocals don't sound nearly as good (they seem lifeless), while the drum sound is lacking. The snare is too high in the mix and the fast blasting sections sound childish in comparison. At least the double bass is nice and heavy.

To those who haven't heard that particular album, I'll try to give a basic description of what these songs sound like. The title track offers a good mixture of aggressive death metal and depressive doom. The whole introduction is extremely slow and heavy. It takes some time to build up, but once the tempo rises then you're in for some good headbanging. There's a very chaotic guitar solo towards the end of the song that just screams brutality. "Evoke the Excess" again starts off slow and doomy, but the rest of the song is more typical in structure. There's a lot of chunky, American-style death metal riffing along the lines of Obituary and Baphomet along with some heavy double bass drumming thrown overtop. The tempo actually changes many times in the song. There's more doom sections later (think "Mental Funeral" era Autopsy), and eventually some faster, simple riffs of the Swedish death metal variety. The ending riff in particular, which is more mid-paced, sounds very much like something off of Carnage's "Dark Recollections" LP.

If you're looking to expand your early Fleshcrawl collection, I would advise getting the debut album first. The two songs on this 7" are both executed much more professionally on the LP, not to mention the highly improved sound production. But if you happen to stumble upon this vinyl somewhere for cheap, it's probably a good idea to pick it up because it's very sought after these days.