����� Used to stock the vinyl release years ago, but for some reason we never had the CD that came out on Hydra Head. Now that we've got that monstrous new 1993 - 1997 collection from Craw that just came out, though, I figured that we'd pick up their final album as well, for anyone whose just discovering this killer math-metal outfit.

����� This was the last hurrah. Released in 2002 with little fanfare, Bodies For Strontium 90 would be the fourth and final album from Cleveland's Craw, who had spent most of the previous decade carving out a unique and intense strain of mathy, metallic, jazz-damaged heaviness, which directly and indirectly influenced much of the angular, discordant music that followed in the hardcore and metal underground. It made perfect sense that Bodies found a home at Hydra Head, as much of the music that the label was championing could be traced back to what Craw was doing in a dank Cleveland-area basement in the early 90s. We're still feeling the reverberations from what these guys were doing back then. And it turned out to be a terrific album, heavier and denser than prior works, but still resonating with that uniquely nervous, introspective energy that marked all of Craw's output. One of the notable changes were Joe McTighe's vocals, which were bolder and more forceful than what we were used to hearing; the anguished, strained delivery for his fractured, often hallucinatory prose on those older Craw albums gave the music an emotional tension that often contrasted with the jagged, discordant riffing and pummeling percussive fury. Here though, he's more out in front of the band, and it makes this stuff feel much more aggressive. Musically, though, it's more of that abrasive, angular heaviness that these guys perfected, hammering out queasy atonal guitar skronk and serrated, sludgy riffage, the rhythm section shifting fluidly from crushing power to jazzy complexity with lots of unconventional time signatures (played by new drummer Will Scharf, also of Keelhaul), with those veins of hauntingly pretty melody and rousing hooks surfacing amid the band's ferocious, cerebral math rock assault. Great goddamn stuff, and that last song "Cars" ranks up there among my favorite Craw songs. While I would have loved to have heard more from the band, they certainly ended with a hell of an album, just as powerful and unique as their older material.