Review: Zebadiah Crowe “Lych Milk”

This EP may be a ‘companion piece’ to Zebadiah Crowe’s last release, the remix mini-album The Cloven Hand, but that doesn’t mean Lych Milk isn’t strong enough to stand on its own. Where the prior offering was a deconstructed, barely recognizable chimera of electronic snarls by Seething Akira and Lords Of Ruin, Lych Milk returns to Zebadiah Crowe in its pure form: thrash-infused, mechanical and unforgiving blackness.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some studio trickery at work here – Zebadiah Crowe have revisited their own compositions on this EP, dismantling and re-assembling older cuts into newer, more malevolent versions that reflect the current worldwide malaise more effectively.

Sure, they may not be the first band to embrace industrial tropes into their personal black metal vision – think Mysticum, Gaahlskag or Aborym, for example – but Zebadiah Crowe inject a devil-may-care, lawless and irreverent attitude into their take on the genre. Lych Milk is as much punk as it is metal, and exhibits as much lo-fi bedroom trickery as it does studio professionalism. It’s primary value proposition, however, is the regularity with which Zebadiah Crowe are producing content: not quite the ‘single of the week’ Spotify model that seems to typify so much popular music, but still an ongoing narrative that drives engagement with the fans.

Tracklisting:

1. Gallows Wood
2. Sabbaticus
3. Footprints

Runtime: 10:50
Record Label: Independent release
Release Date: February 5 2021

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