Verrat – Zeiten der Leere

Artist: Verrat

Title: Zeiten der Leere

Release: LP / Digital

Year: 2022

Label: Save The Scene Records

One of the things I find fascinating about genres, as containers for how aesthetics work in music, is the idea that certain genres become perceived as the appropriate vessels for delivering specific themes and messages. While you certainly could write a pop song about murder and a death metal song about love, you are objectively going to find that the opposite is more typical. This tends to suggest to me that we have some aesthetic association of the sound of a genre with the kinds of images, symbols, and meanings that is represents. Put simply, music has vibes, and if you want to convey a certain kind of message, some genres are better than others for helping you get that across.

All that to say that Austrian neocrust band Verrat’s first full length is called Zeiten der Leere which means “times of emptiness” and, listening to the blistering blackened crustcore they pound through on the album, yeah. That tracks.

The easy comparison to make for Verrat would be something like “splitting the difference between Dödsrit and Tragedy,” and I think that’s a totally accurate way to describe them. Having said that, it’s also a bit reductive, because this album is an absolute barnburner that deserves to be appreciated entirely on its own. Backing the tremolo-picked riffs of black metal with blast beats and d-beats overlayed with a guitar tone that is typically nasty and vocals that are atypically guttural for this genre, Verrat provide an unrelenting assault combining the best elements of crust and metal, without ever losing the anthemic quality that the best hardcore has.

In fact, my general take on crust is that the way I can tell if I like it or not is that if, while listening to it, I spontaneously find myself wanting to pump my fist in the air, then it’s doing its job right. This album demands near constant fist pumping.

Returning to the aesthetics, a quick look at the cover or listen to any song will give you a sense of how bleak the album is, thematically. Lyrics that combine feelings of isolation, rage, and despair are coupled with stirring calls to arms over inequality and oppression. I find that this is the thematic tension of much of the best, most pointed neocrust: the modern world is designed to crush us in a hundred ways, yet we find ways to show resiliency and rebellion in the face of dystopia.

Once again, you never go wrong with the “how often do you find yourself wanting to pump your fist as you listen” metric.

So if any of this sound appealing to you, please give Verrat a listen. This is a rager of a debut full length and I look forward to more righteous-anger-ever-as-the-walls-close-in style crustcore of this ilk in the future from them.

Source: diyconspiracy.net