Year of release: 2018
Label: Wolfspell Records
Rating: 7,4 / 10
The CROC NOIR band assembled only 2 years ago, but it has already managed to issue 5 releases, and the sixth is this full-length album - debut for the band. CROC NOIR are French guys who devoted their creativity to the glorification of the dark side of nature, and this automatically means a biased attitude towards them, since 90% of French-speaking bands of this kind are boring snot-chewers. Fortunately, this can not be said about CROC NOIR. Their album turned out to be quite traditional, it could even come out on Werewolf Promotion. It is very melancholic, but at the same time rude, angry and cold. Dark and raw (this are not usual words for such cases, it's really like that) sounding ransmits the selected themes very well.
The album does not follow any concrete style. The fragments alternate from purely French depressive stuff to modern atmospheric and old-fashioned punkish. The decision is controversial: these fragments are joined rather badly, sometimes it all seems like a complete lack of purpose, but I fell something very honest and incorruptible in all this. Sometimes CROC NOIR switches to total DARKTHRONE / SARGEIST accompanying this with features of a national hunting music - I mean accordion. It's not really an innovation but I always welcome such originality when it is in place. In general, “Mort” is perceived as a voice from the later era of cassette releases when the best classic albums were already released, and from the seeds they scattered, still quite awkward shoots appeared. I am sure that this work would be perfectly listened to on the tape - I recommend the publisher to think about the release of a small print run.