Band:	Kruelty
Album:	Untopia
Release date:	March 2023

01. Unknown Nightmare
02. Harder Than Before
03. Burn The System
04. Reincarnation
05. Maze Of Suffering
06. Manufactured Insanity
07. Untopia


Come and feast your ears on some Japanese Kruelty, as they give you a serious hardcore beatdown on this chugging hell of an album, Untopia.

Formed in the land of the rising sun back in 2017 is Kruelty (who have opted to go for the K instead of C because they can, and because they're Kool), a band whose style is something along the lines of death doom-meets-beatdown hardcore, an oddly satisfying fusion of two extreme genres, and I must say it's very effective. Back in 2020, Kruelty hit us hard in the face with their debut album A Dying Truth, a special kind of brutality. Well, now they've returned with Untopia (perfectly titled, as it clearly sends off polar opposite vibes of Utopia), and I will have you know, it's even more brutal than the previous effort.

A hammering stampede of devastatingly powerful riffs that go back and forth between heavy slamming and groovy melody, where the tempo varies between mid-tempo slugging and ferocious hammering aggression, with furious hardcore beatdowns that will surely crush all before them on an apocalyptic path of imminent destruction, are accompanied with monstrously menacing growls, sounding like they were unleashed by a demonic being from the bowels of hell itself, along with insane drumming with ferocious punk rhythm. That's how I would describe this monster of an album in one (very long) sentence.

The album has more twists and turns than a series of Game Of Thrones, starting with my personal highlight, the impressive "Burn The System", with its groovy Bolt Thrower-style riffing, which is followed by the brutal slamming riffs monstrously chugging away on the track "Reincarnation". You then have a different approach that really spices things up, referring mainly to the haunting atmospheric female screams at the beginning of "Maze Of Suffering", which inevitably leads to a montage of grooviness and heavy slamming. Throughout, you will be hit by hardcore beatdowns, but these become even more apparent on the closing title track, which is probably the closest song to sounding like hardcore on the entire album.

However, the album is relatively short, which I don't find to be an issue at all personally, with the longer tracks only around the six-minute mark. I find the tracks don't go into long plodding doom territory, and aside from the overall death doom tone and sound, I would say there's more of a regular death metal approach in style, more of an Autopsy influence than, let's say, early Katatonia.

If you want some solid hardcore breakdowns this has plenty, if you want a bit of doom thrown in then this has that too, and if you want some groovy Bolt Thrower melodies, then you're in for a treat. So all in all, this is an album for any death metal fan to find something to appreciate, but be warned: this is not one for easy listeners.