EP review: Night Crowned “Humanity Will Echo Out”
Excellent dark, melodic and brutal music on debut EP by Sweden’s Night Crowned.
Night Crowned’s three-track debut EP “Humanity Will Echo Out” surprises me. I have never heard of the band and as I listen I am impressed by the music. Normally bands this good don’t just appear from thin air. They come from somewhere. That turns out to also be the case with Night Crowned. There is plenty of pedigree here: Marcus Sunesson on guitar (Engel, The Crown, CyHra, The Haunted), Henric Liljesand on bass (The Unguided, Nightrage, Amaranthe), Janne Jaloma on drums (Dark Funeral), Ken Romlin on vocals (Dark Forest of North, Disrated) and Johan Eskilsson on guitar (Cipher System).
Night Crowned plays powerful and high-energy music in the tradition of Nordic extreme metal of the 1990s. It sometimes reminds me of the heavier parts of Amorphis’ music and there are also reminders of Dark Funeral and similar bands. The music is brutal and heavy but it also has great melodies and an atmospheric soundscape. The three songs on this EP – “No Room for Hope”, “Nocturnal Pulse” and “All Life Ends” – are all excellent and they make it clear what this band is all about. The future is bleak and in such a dystopian society we need a suitable soundtrack of hopelessness. Here we have it. I really like when bands put out an EP like this one, where we get slam-dunked by terrific music, rather than, which is too often the case, a full-length album with three-four great songs and then some fillers. I can only imagine how good this can be live on stage. I have seen Sunesson, Liljesand and Jaloma perform here in Japan with other bands and I hope they will return with Night Crowned.
Night Crowned’s “Humanity Will Echo Out” is out now via Black Lion Records.
