Inhuman Nature’s sophomore LP, Greater Than Death, is a solid contender for the best crossover thrash album of the year.
Riffs, grooves, solos, death metal and d-beat influences—it’s got everything you could ever ask for from a record like this, with some ridiculously sick artwork from Andrei Bousikov to complete the package.
I asked the UK band’s bassist Daragh Markham to list his Top 5 crossover records and by his own admission he’s taken a pretty warped definition of the term to cover basically anything that fuses metal and punk/hardcore. He also has loads to say on each of his picks so let’s get right to it.
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Inhuman Nature bassist Daragh Markham:
“This is not your father’s crossover list. Shit, I don’t know whose it is. Maybe an estranged cousin with a personality disorder and a really good internet connection. For, what is crossover if not metalpunk, really? And what is metalpunk if not crust? Estranged perhaps, but relatives all from the same family. See, we got there in just a few steps.
“As Inhuman Nature’s bassist and resident crust fanatic, I have a slightly warped definition of crossover. It’s why our stuff now has an undertone of Out From the Void-era Antisect. Don’t forget, ‘hardcore’ was also used to refer to Discharge and Shitlickers way back when, not just Suicidal Tendencies or Cro-Mags or whatever.
“So I’m gonna stretch the parameters of the term here and argue that crossover doesn’t need to solely revolve around thrash and hardcore. Nerds, purists and pretentious assholes will say that it must, but where’s the fun in that. And you’ve read all the other Top-Whatever, Crossover-Whoever lists by now haven’t you? Journey with me then, to the stinkier, angrier side of crossover. The Crustover, if you will…”
#5) Carnivore, Retaliation (1987)
“If we were to be honest here, Reign In Blood is the crossover record. Hannemann infusing Slayer’s thrash with his lust for hardcore helped change extreme music forever. Sure, it’s a thrash album, but I pedantically maintain it also counts as crossover purely because of how prevalent the hardcore influence is throughout RIB.
"Without the punk element you simply wouldn’t have that record. And it easily shits on any actual crossover-confirmed album. And yet, picking it would be too easy. So let’s go with an underrated gem that is noticeably absent from so many of these lists, and what will need to be carefully studied by the successive generations after us, the future Children of Technology.
“Yes, it’s Carnivore’s Retaliation. The self-titled before it is a fucking ripper for sure ('World Wars III & IV' only gaining relevancy with each passing year/regime - “WE HATE THIS PLANET”), so it’s a tough call. But Retaliation boasts 'Ground Zero Brooklyn,' 'Inner Conflict,' 'Technophobia,' 'Five Billion Dead,' and the absolute crossover masterpiece, 'Sex and Violence,'
“The snotty speed and propulsion of hardcore, the churning, hyper aggressive riffs of thrash, the raging d-beats and relentless double kicks, the molten bass tone like a reactor overload, Pete Steele’s unparalleled post apocalyptic bellows and shrieks, the seamless transitions from chugging thrash-bruiser riffs into frenzied speed of sound punk assaults - this album is a masterclass in crossover. It’s not crust per se of course, but it has influenced many a crusty.
"And the lyrical content too, lest we forget - paeans to wanting to masturbate without condemning yourself to Hell, and just trying to vibe out the imminent nuclear holocaust with whiskey and pizza. It’s a full spectrum account of awaiting total destruction.”
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#4) Disfear, Live the Storm (2008)
“Continuing my contrary, adversarial position, I’m fighting hard here not to nominate what I believe is both the best death metal album of all time (even Scott Carlson agrees) and surely a toptier bastardwork of deranged crossover art - Repulsion’s death/grind/hardcore hybrid Horrified. But I think I can push the boat out further (see how I’m sneaking in more favourites than I’m allotted - fuck your list counts, fuck your genre distinctions) and really go for it:
“Disfear’s Live the Storm - total d-beat rock 'n' roll stadium crust perfection. I did not get this album at first. The production and melodic aspects threw the 20-year-old me, freshly evangelical with Doom’s Rush Hour of the Gods and Disrupt et al. But it would become a lesson that has sustained me thru out life - never underestimate the Swedish ear for songwriting. 'Get It Off' is the 'Kickstart My Heart' of crust (if you don’t abuse stimulants you won’t understand).
"'Deadweight' is pure glory, 'The Cage' triumphant rage to make you put your head thru the wall. 'The Furnace' and its haunting siren leads. 'Testament,' a call to arms issued at the barricades of nihilism, with delicious feedback acting as counterpoint to the brutal bass-heavy riffs. 'In Exodus,' just crust singalong pit triumph.
“Where a lot of Swedish d-beat, it must be said, adheres to a grim formula (and it’s a formula I fucking love), Disfear rocket head and shoulders above everyone else into the stratosphere with their anthemic rock 'n' roll approach. This album elevated the whole goddamn form ok? I almost wanted to go with Wolfbrigade here, and there’s a steroid-strong (like their rhythm guitar player) argument for opting with them.
"Shit, you could even nominate Scandinavian Jawbreaker to really turn punkmetal crossover on its head. But no one in crossover crust has reached the heights of Disfear. And this record is undoubtedly Tompa’s finest vocal hour. Throat shredding supremacy. D-beat is love, d-beat is life.”
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#3) Morne, Rust (2008)
“Another band I didn’t get at first. But then just before we went away to Europe with High Command a couple years back, something clicked and I ended up just continuously rinsing most of Morne’s catalogue throughout the whole three-week tour. Obsessed is putting it lightly. They were my favourite ‘new’ band discovery for a long time. I think the production will throw you off if you’re expecting totalcrustfilth, and the songwriting on many of their releases is all about this incremental layering, that it’s easy for it to go over your head if you’re not paying attention to the structures they’re building.
“The songwriting is subtle even when it’s bludgeoning you. But then the smouldering innovation of doomed-out Bolt Thrower riffs in 'Twilight Burns,' taking it back to BT’s crust roots but giving it the Morne doom treatment. The d-beat fury of 'Truth Is Light' showing Morne’s short punk blasts are as powerful as their drawn out megaliths of sound.
"There’s so much low end in their music that even the ‘lighter’ d-beat bits still have so much heft. And apart from Swordwielder, I haven’t heard anyone capture the uncanny synths of Amebix like Morne do. Milosz’s credentials in Filth of Mankind already made him a Crust Genius to me, but with Morne he is breathing new life into the genre.
“Because of their mastery of the style, even the ‘ploddy thrashdoom’ bits hit right. Think of how really early stenchcore, Deviated Instinct and the like, tried those plodding two-step bits and it sounded kinda naff cos it was barbarian punks trying to play sophisticated thrash. Like, you listen to early Hellbastard and think ‘this is great and charming but maybe it would hit just that bit harder if they were in command of the thrash elements’. No such issues here with Morne. It’s just all so well done. I cannot emphasise enough how much you need this band in your life.”
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#2) Amebix, Monolith (1987)
“Firstly - fuck Rob ‘The Baron’ Miller. Whatever Holocaust-denying bullshit fascist trip he went on to post-Amebix is his own and he has rightly been ostracised for it, no less than by his own brother and bandmate Stig who clarified his position in a statement addressing the controversy at the time - Amebix ‘secretly slack-jawed knuckle-dragging Nazi sympathisers? Absolute bollox!’
“So don’t let that later nonsense taint this record for you. Monolith has already been maligned by Crust Snobbery because the metal is really at the forefront on this album. But so is the songwriting, their strongest of any release. This is a metalpunk masterpiece. We once drove around Scandinavia on a winter tour, crossing over the border somewhere along Norway and Sweden, and the eerie synths of 'Monolith' into 'Nobody’s Driving' came on in the van as we rounded all these snow covered forests and frozen lakes. It was atmospheric as fuck - before we got pulled over by police and a camera crew doing the Scandinavian version of Highway Patrol.
“Anyway, with Monolith Amebix’s playing and technique are at their peak. They’re not struggling, they own this, as the live footage of this era attests. The riffing and bass work are tight as fuck, but still frantic and unhinged, and the drums for once have competency and power (this is before drum god Roy Mayorga stepped in for the 2000s incarnation).
"The ineptitude from before, that helped them birth crust, has grown here into great control of writing and performing. It follows similar fault lines of instinct/intuition as Sabbath. Critics once called those Brummies ‘unskilled labourers’, and Geezer Butler himself said that if he had actually studied bass and Tony Iommi hadn’t had to tune down and invent his own chords, the band would have inevitably sounded conventional. The case is the same for Amebix. They made their own metalpunk amalgamation with what they had. And we owe them a debt.
“There is something eternal about Amebix, because they plugged straight into the source and brought back glimpses with them. They are the sound of both wasting away in a squat on cider and glue, and also touching an ancient stone in rural Devon while on acid, feeling the power from the mainline for just a flash. That throbbing metallic bass and ultrafast shredding guitar in 'Chain Reaction' as Miller roars 'No gods, no masters… WE ARE STRAINING AT THE LEASH!'
"‘Coming Home’ is a death ritual of mine - whenever someone close dies, I have to have a drink and play that song. 'Time Bomb' is what I listen to when my employers steal from me. THE BEST METAL IS PLAYED BY PUNKS FUCK OFF IF YOU THINK I’M WRONG.”
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#1) Anti Cimex, Scandinavian Jawbreaker (1993)
“Yeah, I had to do it. From the second the dialogue sample utters 'Let’s kick some ass' and that staccato, muscular, percussive intro kicks in with the unholy squeals, this album takes you by the throat and throws you down Amphetamine Alley.
“Every time you try to raise your battered body, Anti Cimex kick you back down into the dirt. And you lay there in bliss. Scandinavian Jawbreaker is, for lack of a better comparison, Cimex’s own Feel the Darkness - it doesn’t sound like anything they did before or since, and merged metal and punk brilliantly. Tasteful guitar heroics, hellfire pounding drums, career-defining vocal performances, and ingenious songwriting.
“I actually think somehow this album is UNDERrated. The energy and flamboyance are unbelievable. How heavy and aggressive are 'Dogfight,' 'Hatred,' 'Heading For Hell'?! Just next level shit. Part 1 of the title track is an absolute facemelter. '… of Ice' is the bullseye later-
Disfear aim for, the whole fucking template. Closer 'Nailbiter' is the final fistkiss goodnite. It’s everything Swedish d-beat would and could be. The funeral procession breakdown back into d-beat madness - THIS IS METALPUNK ON SPEED CUT WITH STEROIDS. If I ever saw this live I would beat the shit out of myself. In joy.
“This release crowned Cimex the reigning kings of Swede-beat (until the last 15 years or so when, I’d warrant, Wolfbrigade usurped the throne as they began synthesising almost every potent mainstrain of Swede extremity into their own d-beat brew - the death metal of Entombed, the pagan black-swing of later Bathory, and more…). The riffs and vocals are obviously great. And that the title song is about blowjobs and big tits? Fucking genius.
"But what remains for me is Charlie’s drums. On this album he plays a d-beat that sounds as savage today as it must have done when they laid it down on record. He fucking nailed it on this one, it is the all time greatest d-beat performance on record. I don’t wanna belabour the point but this album is so timelessly, peerlessly hard that I had to tattoo the artwork to the side of my thick Irish skull. And 'Rust Never Sleeps' is what I listen to when I steal from my employers.
“Sorry this was longer than your editorial likely permits but fuck it. Excess and nothing less.”
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Greater Than Death is out now via Church Road Records.
Order here: US | UK |EU
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