In The Company Of Serpents - A Crack In Everything

In The Company Of Serpents – A Crack In Everything
Release Date: 11th July 2025
Label: Self Released
Bandcamp
Genre: Sludge, Doom Metal, Post-Metal, Stoner Metal.
FFO: Neurosis, Usnea, Fister.
Review By: Mark Young

I’ve got more onboard with Sludge / Doom Metal recently, and I’m not sure if it is a by-product of reaching saturation point with death/thrash etc. This may sound like an oxymoron, but there feels (at least to me) that there is a level of creativity at play that is missing from some of those genres I mentioned earlier. It still hasn’t replaced my love for riffs delivered at breakneck speeds, but releases that evoke a visceral thrill are becoming rare, whereas there have been a number of releases this year that have really resonated with me.

In The Company of Serpents consists of a three-piece at its core, and that core has their own way of making music that initially falls under the sludge/doom banner, but is actually a little bit more than that. They don’t stay within the expected confines, rather they use it as a guideline to then explore areas that you wouldn’t normally expect to hear. What they don’t do is sacrifice the riffs in order to make these leaps and there are some mighty builds on here which starts with the opening track, Don’t Look In The Mirror. It’s got a sound like it’s coated in a sheen of oil, and in terms of an opener it falls into standard territory – meaty riffs, worn down vocals and does a job without necessarily setting the place on fire. Initial thoughts are that if the rest of the tracks are like this, then you will have at best a decent set of songs, but they aren’t thinking like that. On A Patchwork Art, tradition is given the boot, and we are suddenly into Western territory as they trot out a song that you could find at home on Red Dead Redemption until they hit distortion. This is repeated throughout, but there are little changes each time that are just enough to avoid making a straight repetition. That spaghetti western style looms large here and as a result puts them in a unique position. It’s almost like the opener was just used as a means to explore freedom in where they wanted to take us. Delirium is a short, mellow acoustic piece, a palate cleanser of sorts, and brings Cinders in. Cinders takes that theme from A Patchwork and runs with it. This time, that western movement is given a touch of grit. They don’t go for the super dense or ultra-low tuning, with a lot of the heaviness coming from Grant Netzorg’s vocals, dosed with a weary anguish to it. Their tone seems brittle overall, but that fragile sound gives it a more abrasive edge, and it’s an edge that becomes more noticeable as the album moves on. I didn’t care for it if I’m honest and that is on me, really, as I expected them to have a more traditional sound.

What it does do is allow their arrangements to ring out, for example on Buzzard Logic, they hit you with some quality guitar within some deft tempo changes. Once again, they offer us a slightly different way of doing it, one that is true to the sludge/doom genre but is also exclusive to them. The closing piece, Ghosts On The Periphery, shows a darker edge, an arrangement that is part western blues and part something else, I’m not quite sure. They take what is a simple premise and then imbue it with life, which is what they have done with each track here. They haven’t gone for technical wizardry or unnecessary repetition, they have just written songs that satisfy what they need and just so happen to make them different from everybody else. But, whilst I can see/hear what they are doing and how it separates them from the others, there was something here that I couldn’t get on with. I mentioned the sound, that abrasive sound earlier, and I’m pointing my finger at that. Ultimately, fans of the bands listed below should be onboard with this. Fans of their earlier output, ditto, but it’s just not fully for me.