Allow me to indulge myself with this one. Chances are you aren’t familiar, and by every stretch of the imagination this band doesn’t need more records than they have fans on Facebook. It’s the most ridiculous JMI yet, and once you hear it I think you’ll understand. The first insta back for October and the first JMI insta is none other than Crook!
If you know me and WV, you know the eternal soft spot I have for early Facebook-core beatdown. It’s digital, it was a new genre, it was everything I loved about the scene as we kind of transitioned from deathcore out of djent, and in to this kind of metalcore revival that we’re in now.
I think beatdown (and I’m going to keep saying beatdown for ease of use, fight me) was such a blip that really kind of captivated everyone from like 2013-2018. Plenty of bands have made a career of it, but as with everything now that it has matured it has gotten a bit more homogenized. CROOK was like, the most self-aware of the bands in this scene. It’s not as serious as say, Outlaw – but it’s not like a parody band. Or maybe it is, but it parodies itself and kind of registers as a caricature of the whole scene without being corny. It’s just all the elements and tropes of beatdown cranked up to 11. Its a love letter to beatdown.
You know that Kingpin means business when you start the intro track (which is also the title track, badass) and are greeted with a ridiculously over the top “I AM THE KINGPIN BLEGHHHHHHH.” Like I can not overstate how “heavy” this EP is. You every hear a breakdown that is so over-the-top that it makes you laugh? It’s literally that for 15 minutes straight. It’s ARF ARFs and BLEGHS and two steps and blast and just everything you want. It’s so dynamic and fervent and just out of control. Something that would be easy to dismiss as an internet beatdown project I think has some true culture attached to it.
Kingpin is one of the best produced, most vocally diverse and heaviest EPs I’ve ever heard. It’s loaded with charm, and absolutely bound to be your new guilty pleasure. Not everything has to be some art school screamo! Sometime you just want to windmill around your living room and laugh at how low the BPM goes.
Alex and Andrew have put so much of themselves into this release, and after almost a year of waiting I’m so happy to share the finished product with you guys! He did the art (check outDownpour Design) , and effectively all the music on this release himself. Audio was once again done byThird Eye Studios and it sounds beefier than ever.
This one-time pressing is limited to 300 copies across five variants:
50 Fiend (Wax Vessel Signature)
50 Deadweight (Wax Vessel Signature)
50 Fake (Wax Vessel Signature)
50 Bridge Burner
100 Kingpin
1.5x thickness Matte single pocket jackets
Double sided matte full color insert
Black polylined innersleeves
Gold foil numbering
Stuffed into polybags
Orders go live Monday, October 18th at 1:00pm CST and will be shipping immediately!
