The long wait was definitely worth it for Craft's newest Lp, Void. This long-running Swedish black metal outfit last appeared around six years ago with the album Fuck The World, whose evil, misanthropic black metal made a hell of an impression on me when it came out, and won them an army of new fans who worshipped the band's mix of barbaric blackness and rocking mid-tempo power. On this album, Craft sound as crushingly heavy as before, but the sound seems even more savage this time around; the guitars are heavier and more low-end than before, the recording thicker and heavier, the vocal more blown out and distorted than ever, and the misanthropic vibes are through the roof.

The epic, apocalyptic promise of "Serpent Soul" showcases Craft's brilliant use of contrasting speedy sinister tremolo riffs with slower, driving doom-laden pacing, and the band unleashes a series of driving "black n roll" grooves on "Come Resonance Of Doom" that induce a serious trance-like feel even as the Frostian crush grinds away at your skull. The furious d-beat blackthrash of "The Ground Surrenders" breaks off into ambient tremolo buzz and distant choral voices before shifting back into another killer burst of black metal with soaring bluesy soloing and a hypnotic buzzing undercurrent, and one of the absolute highlights of Void is the awesome "I Want To Commit Murder", the fastest track on the album and unsurprisingly also the most vicious, a blazing shred-laced call to arms for mass bloodshed and killlust that has one of the best kill-crazy black metal choruses/sing-along parts that I've ever witnessed. All throughout these songs, Craft has this distinct style of contrasting slower lumbering tempos with faster buzz saw riffing that gives the music a unique ferocious effect, referencing an obvious early Darkthrone influence but twisting that into their own image, which they further embellish with all sorts of weird processed guitar tracks, brief bits of spacey effects, killer melodic leads that suddenly streak out of the driving frostbitten fury. Craft are geniuses at melding this rocking mid-paced propulsion to murderous blackened riffing and a very subtle quirkiness, and Void is some of their best stuff yet, hateful and intensely heavy, rocking and doom-laced, utterly oppressive and boiling over with a constant threat of murderous violence....