Crown Of Anguish – Stalker At The Midian Gate Review

Friend, has your day been triumphant? If not, might I recommend a wholesome death metal tonic in the form of Crown of Anguish’s debut album, Stalker at the Midian Gate? The UK band whips up such a calamitous racket across these generously melodic 38 minutes that whatever dearth of triumph you might currently be facing – a badly stubbed toe, a slightly too-tepid latte, an utter collapse on the back nine of a children’s mini-golf course – will surely blur to a dull ache.

If I were to tell you that Stalker at the Midian Gate is a perfect midpoint between Nile’s Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka and Morbid Angel’s Domination and then told you to throw a bucket of darts at the dictionary to fill in another 500 words and make your own review, I would be an asshole, but I wouldn’t exactly be wrong. Crown of Anguish’s style hovers in that beautiful space where technical precision melts into the nirvana of pummeling, hypnotic groove, which means that the band can offer up a lot of tricks without killing the overall vibe.

Album opener “Gathering Stormfires of the Perilous Want” bursts right into things with a swiftly pattering drum salvo and quarter-note guitars played with such legato they sound like writhing snakes with suspension bridge cables for spines. But then the 1:15 mark drops into a huge, slinking breakdown that foregrounds Ali Lauter’s intensely powerful guttural vocals and some sly dark melodic fragments. (Lauter’s vocals are especially impressive on mid-album slayer “Sidereal Rites.”) Small details pepper the album in ways that aren’t obvious on initial impressions. The first minute of “Radiant Moon of Aphos” has some very subtle keys shadowing its guitar arpeggio, while the midpoint of “Vengeful Eye of the Magi” has a thrilling half-time section where some extra-hefty guitar chunking is backed by mandolin-sounding acoustic guitar work.

Despite the frenzied punishment of the album, if I told you it was altogether warm and cozy, would you shoot me a “bitch, pleeeeeease” look? Here’s the thing: death metal sometimes stresses me the hell out. I doubt that many death metal bands would take offense at that, yet how many would embrace the opposite? Stalker at the Midian Gate is full of loud, fast, ugly noises that most regular human people would judge to be manifestly unpleasant. But the production on this thing, the songwriting, the acoustic asides and melodic flourishes, the tight doubling of Matt Gornall’s guitars and Dan Walden’s bass – all of this amounts to a satisfying fresh coat of paint on a familiar old house with good bones. 

On the slower-motion “He Who Bears the Key,” for example, Crown of Anguish could be playing Mithras through a veil of molasses, or maybe dressing up Incantation’s underrated Forsaken Mourning of Angelic Anguish. Alternately, if Immolation’s Harnessing Ruin is a hot, wafting blast of desert sandstorm, maybe Stalker at the Midian Gate is the glinting of sunset dancing across oxidized particles as the dust begins to settle. Truly, though, the specter of early Nile looms largest, especially on “Graven Challengers to the Rift.” And yet, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it: Nile is a tremendous band, and the true successors and heirs to their unique constellation of sounds is a vanishingly small cohort.

I can’t promise that Stalker at the Midian Gate will jingle your jangly bits the same way it does mine. Hell, I don’t know you at all – you might not like death metal even one little bit and maybe you’re just reading these words because you’re still steamed that I said I would let you write your own 500-word review and yet here I continue to prattle on. Friend, the world is sharp and promises are everywhere broken, but death metal – at least, for me, of a sort – can be a salve. Crown of Anguish have tapped into a vein of ore that digs and stomps and spits great hot fury but that carries it home with an air of majestic and well-earned confidence.