TRACK LISTING

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Crypticus
1.  Beauty & Deceased
2.  The Hungerer
3.  End the World of Man
4.  Baron of the Dark
Scaremaker
5.  From the Coffin
6.  Insane Die-Section
7.  Reverberate Through the
     Dark Woods
8.  Demon Slave
9.  Mansion of the Macabre

Total playing time:  34:38

Release Date: January 17, 2012
Label: Selfmadegod Records

Crypticus/Scaremaker- Split

Reviewer: J. A. Burt

January 19, 2012

So two bands on Razorback Records, one of which actually has the owner of Razorback Records and his wife in it, put out a split album, and it’s not on Razorback.  Strange, but whatever.  I don’t suppose it’s actually a big deal or anything, but it’s certainly interesting.  If you are, at this point in the game, as yet unfamiliar with either Crypticus or Scaremaker, but you’ve ever heard anything from the Razorback catalogue, you might as well have heard both Crypticus and Scaremaker.  Uncomplicated, mosh-style thrashy Death Metal is the game, and at least one of these bands does it quite well.

The Crypticus portion of the split is, as expected, the far superior.  Quick cuts of rollicking, groovy Death Metal of the type I like to refer to as “Rogga-core” with a nice meaty low-end that easily gets you banging your head despite having basically heard it all dozens of times before under different names.  Opening track “Beauty & Deceased” along with “End the World of Man” positively smokes, reminding why their last album They Called Me Mad was so enjoyable.    The only problem really is that the other two tracks were on their 2010 EP Rites of Infestation, which was offered as a free download.  Both good tracks, but it would have been nice to get a couple more new ones instead, or at least another cool Runemagick cover. 

I was definitely not a fan of Scaremaker’s debut album, finding it to be a bland, plodding affair, and while they seem to have stepped up their game a fair amount in the interim, their cuts here still leave a good deal to be desired.  Right from the beginning of “From the Coffin”, perhaps the best song they’ve done thus far, it’s clear that they’ve gone and ramped up the aggression level in their material which certainly helps, but they haven’t learned that less is generally much more with this style of music: four to six minute tracks are far too long and tedium inevitably creeps in around the 3 minute mark.  Vanessa Nocera seems to handle the majority of the vocals here and she does a respectable job of it until the awkward, unfortunate clean singing sections of “Demon Slave” which really really don’t fit well.  Too bad too as the hard Death ‘n Roll vibe of the track is quite enjoyable otherwise.  There’s a good deal of reverb present in the production of their tracks, but whether that was done intentionally in order to attempt to grasp a bit of the atmosphere so many bands in this era of cavernous Death Metal employ or not is impossible to know.  Can’t say that I’d recommend this split really as it pretty much only amounts to two newish Crypticus tracks for me. 

Crypticus

Scaremaker