Bandcamp You would not necessarily guess Sardinia from the sound. Crobu’s debut More Than This reaches across the Atlantic for its DNA, the NOLA swamp sludge of Down, Crowbar and Corrosion of Conformity, all downtuned crawl and harsh-shouted bile, and then drags it somewhere colder and more modern. The riffs are thick and the vocals are a dry, upfront roar, but the band keep wandering off the straight sludge path into post-metal and even post-black textures, which is exactly what keeps the record from being a pure homage.
It is strongest when it slows down and opens up. “Awake” is the best thing here, an intimate acoustic opening that detonates into a track with actual dynamic range, deep growls trading with hymnic clean passages and an outro groove that earns its weight. “Violet” pulls a similar trick, breaking its wall of sound with a long, atmospheric guitar solo that is the most genuinely beautiful moment on the album. The closer “I Am The Leaf” swings hard between near-silence and naked violence, the kind of contrast the whole record is reaching for.
What holds it back is the master. Crobu mostly run hot and flat, pushing the loud parts to a brickwall ceiling that crushes exactly the dynamics the songs are built on, and on the heaviest tracks the low mids turn to mud, bass and downtuned guitars fighting over the same frequencies. For a sludge record some of that grime is welcome. For a record that clearly wants the quiet-loud drama of post-metal, it costs them. The vocals, too, sit so dry and far forward that they can feel pasted on top rather than part of the room.
None of that is unusual for a self-released debut, and none of it buries the promise. Crobu can write, they can build a song, and when they trust the slow burn they are genuinely good. A little more air in the mix and the next one could be a real statement. For now, a rough, heavy, promising start.
More Than This is a downtuned sludge and post-metal record cut dry and loud, with harsh shouted vocals pushed right to the front for clarity at the cost of sitting a little outside the room. The guitars are thick and saturated, the bass growls but often blurs into the low mids, and the master runs hot enough to flatten the dynamics on the heaviest tracks. It is at its best where it lets those dynamics breathe: the acoustic-into-eruption build of “Awake”, the long atmospheric solo that breaks open “Violet”, the silence-to-violence swings of “I Am The Leaf”. Those moments show a band with real range underneath the grime, even when the loudness-first production keeps some of it pinned down.
Standout tracks: Awake, Violet
