Crawling Chaos – Wyrd Review

By Twelve

Even before I’d seen the gorgeous cover art over there, Crawling Chaos had me marked. The Italian group’s third full-length release, Wyrd, is written around a theme that discusses prominent women in European folklore, mythologies, and history, and is “full of literary quotes and easter eggs, offering subtle nods to the most curious among the listeners.” Honestly, I was sold before I even noted the genre tag, but death metal and I are no strangers to one another either. So at first glance, Wyrd seems like my perfect match, but I’ve been writing here for years now, and I’ve been misled by cover art and thematic promise before. How will this one hold up?

What’s interesting about Wyrd is that a more apt description of the music is melodic death metal, but the phrase works better as a literal description than a genre tag. Wyrd is a death metal album that has melody, but doesn’t quite match what you could call “melodeath.” It is a heavy album, with no noticeable use of keys and uncompromising death metal overtures, similar to how Crescent approach their music. Guitarists Andrea Velli and Manuel Guerrieri put in some serious work here, swapping brilliantly between a veritable storm of riffs in songs like “Witch-Hunt” and eerie ambience in ones like “Necromancer.” Mind, don’t let that distinction fool you—death metal is absolutely the focus here, as Guerrieri’s roars and Edoardo Velli’s manic drumming make clear. Across Wyrd’s thirty-eight-minute runtime, Crawling Chaos make the most of their thematic source material by launching an all-out assault on the listener in a comparatively pleasing way, with nods to groups like Death, Gojira, and Nile apparent throughout.

Most of the hallmarks of death metal are present for Wyrd, but it’s the moments of melody that really give Crawling Chaos a distinct identity. William Leardini’s bass is wonderful in its griminess, and most songs are concise, speedy, and brutal, but the apparent care for memorability goes a long way too. “Veiled in Secrets” is the clearest example, a mid-paced (this is a relative descriptor) song with a beautiful, almost haunting melody that rings throughout, evocative of the desert the song describes. Similarly, the guitar leads in “To the Furies” are mighty, blending skill and style in a way that makes the song into a journey, exciting and memorable at once. Wyrd is an album of two worlds, firmly rooted in its thematic and stylistic choices, giving it the feel of a complete album, and a well-thought-out one.

I enjoy the melodic moments much more than the more brutal ones on Wyrd, which does make it feel like something of a lopsided listen at times. As I’ve said, crawling chaos can do wonders for both sides of the descriptor. Some songs lean heavier on melody and others heavier on heaviness, and that’s fine. Still, when a song like “Nomen Omen” opens with a slow, haunting melody, with genuine build-up, and then erupts into the same style of death metal that’s been so persistent across Wyrd, it feels almost like a let-down (despite, in this instance, a genuinely stunning vocal performance from Guerrieri). “Nails of Fate” does something similar with an acoustic guitar—a stirring intro that is never realized in the way you expect it to, despite the song itself being very strong. For me, the way Wyrd is structured creates a noticeable rift between the melodic and heavier choices in each song, making the full listen less cohesive than it might have otherwise been.

Wyrd is a fun listen regardless of how you like your death metal, because it is well-written, well-performed, and hits hard. Still, writing the above makes me wonder if I’m not quite the right audience for Crawling Chaos, if only because I have this bias for the melodic side of melodic death metal. And yet, I have to recommend it, which means you may like it a good deal more than I have. And I have enjoyed it—it’s heavy, it sounds great, and it includes literary and historic references. Realistically, I was always going to enjoy this one.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 128 kbps mp3
Label: Time to Kill Records
Websites: crawlingchaos-ttk.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/crawlingchaosit
Releases Worldwide: March 28th, 2025

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