Crust/Stenchcore out of Vancouver.

Our take: Barren Soil is from Vancouver, but those of you with an eye for graphic design will notice the Celtic knots and other medieval imagery and realize that Barren Soil draws musical inspiration from the 80s UK crust and stenchcore scenes. Crust and stench are two styles I didn’t have a taste for in my younger days, but I’ve come to love them in recent years, and Barren Soil carves out an interesting niche within that universe. They bring together elements of faster crust a la Doom or Extreme Noise Terror with heavy, mid-paced parts in the vein of Amebix or Axegrinder, sometimes alternating between those styles and tempos within the same song. The production is heavy and huge-sounding, with guttural vocals that are on the nose for the style yet highly effective. While tracks like “Illusions of Progress” flirt with a straightforward crust sound, others like “Throne and Altar” lean more toward thrash metal with complex riffing and more interesting rhythmic dynamics. There’s even an ultra-short Heresy-style thrasher, “Earn the Dirt.” And then there are the crushing, mid-paced stench parts, which are peppered throughout the tape but come to a head with the epic closing track, “Commodified Neurons.” With powerful production, great songwriting, and a fresh-sounding style, Barren Soil captures something special on this tape.