Structures

If there‘s one thing I love more about hardcore than the actual music, it‘s the friends I‘ve made along the way. And I’m always down to support my friends in their creative endeavours. It helps obviously if I like their creative output as well. I’ve said before that if someone showed me a description of Cranial as a band, I’d probably not be into them. “Doom”, “post-metal” and “four songs in 40 minutes” are usually not buzz words and phrases that trigger my interest. But since I’m very good friends with two of the band members, I went to a bunch of their shows over the years and was never disappointed. So when they told me they were planning a release show for their latest release, I was down for it, of course. My wife and I made a day trip out of it and after dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in the city Cranial has its home base in, we got to see them perform their new songs off of Strucutes, which turned out to be really, really good.

Unfortunately, the records weren’t ready for the actual record release, but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes. Then again, one of my friends hand-delivered the record to me when we hung out, so I’m definitely not complaining. Love your friends. 

1st Press on Coke Bottle Clear on Moment of Collapse /300

Dark Towers / Bright Lights

From time to time there comes along a band that doesn't really fit my usual taste in music, but still gets to me. I'm not really into doom, sludge, post-metal and so on, but despite that I really like Cranial. Maybe it's because I'm friends with two band members, but usually that doesn't affect me. Usually I can tell my good friends if I don't like their music and it has never affected any friendships. I saw them live at their first record release show and despite the fact that they played four songs in about 40 minutes, I never lost interest. More often than not my attention span lasts for about three and  a half minutes tops and anything longer must be really good to keep my attention. Well, Cranial manage to do just that. I also really like the artwork for this record. The record you can see here was technically only available with the boxset they made. There are 50 of these that came with an engraved wooden box, patches, posters, CD, stickers and the record of course. They really went all out with this box and in hindsight I regret not picking up one because the set in itself is a beautiful piece of art, but 50€ was still a little steep. Anyway, when I asked one of my friends if they had any records lying around because I wanted to get one, he asked me if I wanted a coloured one. Of course I did and I was all the more surprised when he told me that they had one record leftover from the boxsets, so I ended up with this 1/1 copy. It looks awesome, especially in combination with the record sleeve.

If you're into doom, sludge and post-metal, check out Cranial.