Band:	Crib45
Album:	Marching Through The Borderlines
Style:	Post-metal
Release date:	April 2014

01. Gathering The Storms
02. Catharsis
03. Waiting For Deliverance
04. Borderlines
05. Towards Perdition
06. Fading Hope
07. Into The Abyss
08. Clearing The Eye
09. Transcending

While listening to a boatload of sludge/post-metal, I have come to the realization that the bands in this genre are one of three things:

A) Cult Of Luna worshipers
B) Isis worshipers
C) (A + B) = Rosetta worshipers

Finland's Crib45 fall under option A. The song structures, manifestations, and idiosyncrasies on Marching Through The Borderlines are impeccably similar to Cult Of Luna. This review will not be a knock on them because, as I have stated many times before, band clones are not a bad thing if the music and presentation are done in a way that absolutely warrants another band sounding like another band. In fact, Marching Through The Borderlines is one of the best post-metal records I've heard this year that borrows Cult Of Luna's post-metal equation and with some augmentation, adds a few different elements and properties.

Behind the ample theme are the explosive layered guitars. They create this enormous barrier of static dissonance and lay the infrastructure for a noisy, effects-driven aura that counterpoints the atmospheric landscapes created by the rest of the instruments and tools. The riffs are pretty simplistic, but when added to the thick bass, mid-tempo drum lines, and deep sludge-style screams, the dynamic turns up full-throttle and the sound is immeasurable. There is a lot of melody in the compositions, but they can also be outright chaotic, with high amounts of distortion and some ambient breaks in the flow.

Speaking of flow, the album is over 70 minutes long and will require every ounce of your patience and willpower. Four of the songs clock in over the 12-minute mark - but thankfully those are the four best songs on the album. Crib45 throw the entire book at us during those epic songs: repetitive chord progressions, clarinets and saxophones, keyboards and electronics, industrial tones and samples, and even a tad bit of pedestrian clean singing. The mixture works by adding a sort of non-traditional post-metal benchmark that evolves with continuity and smoothness in originality. Methodical and expertly crafted, the entire album is slow, thick, and feels more expansive than other music of this style. I drift from song to song and get a sensation of dark and heavy atmosphere.

This summary basically describes any Cult Of Luna album ever made. There is no way around it: Marching Through The Borderlines is borderline plagiarizing... or a sign of respect for a formula that has been well-used and successful. The songs are memorable and the production is flawless. It's a very good album that has been done many times before, and will be again until the post-metal/atmospheric sludge regime dies.