Crown of Madness – The Void (EP)
Release Date: 25th March 2022
Label: Self Released
Bandcamp
Genre: Dissonant Death Metal
FFO: Ulcerate, Vitriol, Fallujah, Gorguts.
Review By: Rick Farley
Fun fact, the Crown of Madness members met each other online through World of Warcraft in 2008. As young teenagers, they shared a loved of fantasy games and Heavy Metal, which is strongly reflected in their music. A nerdy one such as I would have to assume their name is taken from a D&D spell of the same name. Yes? Anyways, the band from Vancouver, BC and consisting of now married couple Sunshine Schneider vocals/guitar and Connor Gordon Drums tracked The Void in their apartment using an electric Roland drum kit and Kemper Profiler. That in itself is impressive, however does not even scratch the surface of what’s to come.
The Void is a dark yet beautiful piece of dissonant Death Metal. Bringing an oppressive and magnificent wall of sound for the listener to bear the weight of. Being only an eighteen-minute EP, there’s not a great deal to review, but what is here leaves a significant impact. Track one, The Pale, starts with a sombre sounding piano passage, with a quiet voice underneath. It has a haunting loneliness about it, but only briefly before a distorted chord and harmonics resonate out, creating a discordant melody. Harsh deathly scream and growls sound anguished amidst the slow hellish atmosphere. It gracefully careens back to a single piano passage that’s divergent from the first section. The songs only two minutes long but leaves an unnerving impression. The Piano parts on this song and the album closer are by Claine lamb and guest vocal spot on the slightly blackened track Anguish are by Kaija Krimson of Anarcheon fame.
First single The Manipulated strikes an uneasy balance between dissonant, brutal, and memorable. It’s intense and terrifying disharmony and unorthodox double bass continuously battering you. The use of airy complex chords and tremolo picked guitar melodies form an awkward catchiness that’s repeated enough to stick with you. The bass is dense and moves along like a snake underneath all the heavy cacophonous riffing. The overall soundscape is suffocating and thick, waiting to swallow you up in its infernal vast murk. Devoid of any light until slightly over the two-minute mark, a minor shift in key provides enough reprieve to take a couple deep breaths before the inevitable end. The vocals are brutal but still intelligible. This song alone pays for the price of admission. It’s not very often you get catchy riffs from this kind of harsh complexity.
The most recent single and closing track False God’s Hymn is the most discordant track from The Void. It’s a labyrinth of incredible musicianship creating pure chaos individually yet sonically destroying everything in sight collectively. It’s difficult to comprehend how this song comes together so masterfully under this dizzying lack of tonal structure. It’s grievously composed with mind-boggling technicality, twisting and turning with ill intent.
Moments of stunning textural beauty combined with ominous layers of interweaving intricacies in such a short timespan reveal the serious talent that this duo has. The quality of songwriting is astounding for such a newly founded band. Extreme, yet silver-tongued, I should mention that Sunshine’s vocals are phenomenal, her use of growls, screams and shrieks are all well-placed and count as an entirely different instrument. Her guitar work is equally mesmerizing. Heavy, inharmonious yet somehow memorable. Connors drums even on an electric kit sounds, technical, furious, and pummelling. Frenzied fills, unorthodox double bass and blast beats add chaos and structure to the already volatile ambience. You can hear the energy and passion Crown of Madness put into this EP. They just set the bar extremely high for a future full length, and I, for one, can’t wait to hear it. 
(4.5 / 5)
