The Crown - Royal Destroyer
Metal Blade
Aggressive Melodic Death / Thrash
11 songs (45:45)
Release year: 2021
The Crown, Metal Blade
Reviewed by Ben

I am a relatively late comer to the glory that is The Crown. Having been into them for less than a year, I am pretty fresh when it comes to this band. Deathrace King is their "crowning" (aha.aha.aha) achievement and I worship at its altar of Motorhead infused thrash and death metal. I'll even admit that the first album of theirs that came to my attention was Crowned In Terror with Tomas Lindberg on vocals. This probably puts me in the "poser" camp of fans but, oh well. During my brief tenure enjoying The Crown I have come to really appreciate their stylings. For me, their best parts are the raging moments of brutality that somehow manage to impart an old school feel despite blasting away with drums and guitars. Royal Destroyer is primarily comprised of songs in this vein, but they do go into a very melodic death type of mode on the mid tempo tracks. Glorious Hades is the first such song, but its intentions are a bit disguised by the double bass drumming barrage throughout. We Drift On has a strong seafaring type vibe, but I don't know if that's because of the title, or the feeling of Embrace Of The Endless Ocean vibes. While still being of fairly high quality, these few songs are the only ones that feel a bit off, or derivative. For the most part, the rest of the album is straight ahead, pummeling metal.

Baptized In Violence is a rarity amongst intro tracks. It's less than a minute and a half long, it's not an instrumental, and it has a chorus! This is really more like a death metal punk song! Hell yea. Let The Hammering Begin! (their exclamation point, not mine) is the first "full" track and it takes no smoke breaks in its over six minute duration. Motordeath is deliciously fast and violent sounding, but surprisingly isn't a Metallica sounding song as a tribute. Other than the name, this has no moments of call back to the closely titled Motorbreath. Ultra Faust is another really cool song, but there's something in it that kinda messes things up for me. In the song there is a quote in the lyrics straight from the movie Event Horizon. "Liberate tuta me ex inferis," and I can't get the image of weird smiling guy holding up his eyes in his hand out of my mind, and then Jason Isaac's voice echoes in my head, "save yourself... from... hell." Since this weird quirk is solely due to my own brain, I can't blame the band. Full Metal Justice is another soon to be fan favorite as it is a speedy demonic number. Scandinavian Satan continues the band's streak of tongue in cheek songs about the Debbul. An easy comparison would be to Natashead Overdrive from the Possessed 13 record. Something that I feel I must mention is that singer, Johan, has a much more growly voice that does lend itself to melodic death type singing. He does sound quite fierce, akin to Mikael Stanne, but this is probably why The Crown leans a bit toward a more typical Swedish Death Metal sound at times.

Royal Destroyer is quite impressive for a 2021 metal release. The drums don't sound completely processed to oblivion and back, and this is a band of veterans powering through an album of bangers. For what it's worth, this alone is good enough for the price of admission. I'm also pretty sure that fans of the band who have followed them for much longer than I have will enjoy Royal Destroyer quite a bit. Because of my recent "discovery" of the band, (I do recall the adverts for Crowned In Terror back in the day... and I wanna kick my own ass for not getting into them then!) I have the luxury of preferring certain eras over others. And man, Deathrace King still rules my world. That album probably is what made Shagrath think he could do something similar with the not nearly as successful Motorhead style band, Chrome Division. Anyways, if you only get one album by this band, make it Deathrace King. If you want to venture beyond that beast of metal and try something from today, Royal Destroyer will probably be welcomed by fans of aggressive metal.

Killing Songs :
Baptized In Violence, Full Metal Justice, Motordeath, Ultra Faust
Ben quoted 76 / 100
Other albums by The Crown that we have reviewed:
The Crown - Doomsday King reviewed by Thomas and quoted 83 / 100
The Crown - The Burning reviewed by Thomas and quoted 80 / 100
The Crown - Hell Is Here reviewed by Thomas and quoted 92 / 100
The Crown - Deathrace King reviewed by Thomas and quoted 94 / 100
The Crown - Crowned Unholy reviewed by Jay and quoted no quote
To see all 8 reviews click here
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