Early Graves – Goner (2010)

While we are not huge fans of Crust releases, we find Early Graves “Goner” to contain all the right elements to be a standard release to this genre. We usually trash most bands the genre because their lack of inspiration behind a very uninspired genre (at least for us), however, Early Graves does a pretty solid job in creating 10 crusty songs that have the right amount of quality elements to them.

The band balances Grindcore, Hardcore, Crust and some Death Metal elements in their well crafted sound that is both crushing and well paced. Some Crust bands bore us to death because of the extreme punk influences (most notably on drums), but Early Graves has managed to avoid this by varying their drumming influences and recurring to the punk-ish elements only when needed.

The guitars sound a bit like newer Entombed and they create the perfect crusty sound that this band has. The vocals are pretty straight forward and sound powerful enough. The mixture of fast paced straight forward songs with some ‘slower’ songs provides enough diversity to not get extremely monotonous (another beef with have with the genre).

Overall, for a Crust release, “Gone” is pretty good. Creating a very grim atmosphere paired with aggressive vocals. We don’t like Crust too much, but this does not stop us from admitting that Early Graves does a pretty solid job in “Gone”.

Release: June 22nd, 2010

Country: USA