Band: Trap Them
Title: Darker Handcraft
Label: Prosthetic Records
Distribution: Prosthetic Records
Release date: March 2011
Review: CD

Hailing from Seattle, Washington, this band with December Wolves- and Backstabbers Inc.-members, will celebrate its tenth anniversary later this year. In the past decade, Trap Them, named after the 1977-movie Trap Them And Kill Them (by Joe D’Amato), released several (split) 7”EP’s (amongst those, one with Extreme Noise Terror, via Deathwish Inc., the label that released the band’s second full length, Seizures In Barren Praise, as well; the debut, Sleepwell Deconstructor, was released through Trash Art in 2007). Last year, another 7”EP came out through Southern Lord, and shortly after, Trap Them started recording the third official album with nobody else but Kurt Ballou himself behind the studio desk, known for his production duties to bands as I Hate Sally, Torche, Kruger, Adai, Modern Life Is War and many others.

Darker Handcraft just clocks over half an hour and the album continues where Seizures … ended. These songs are thrashing and grooving, rocking and rolling. The music incorporates elements from Grindcore, Death Metal, Sludge, Punk and Hardcore (besides Groove Metal and Thrash’n’Roll), and it convinces. The album is more varying than before, and the compositions are more powerful and, at the same time, better written (and performed). The riffs are rather technical but less complex and rhythmic. And it’s nice to enjoy a f*ck-you-attitude with quasi-experimental additions.

For open-minded fans of Entombed, Irritate, Dismember, Born Against, Sworn Enemy, Neurosis and Swans.

80/100

Ivan Tibos.