Artist: Crossed Title: Barely Buried Love
Release: LP / Digital
Year: 2020
Label: Catábasis Records, Mise-En-Scène Productions, The Braves, Fireflies Fall, Kill Vinyl, Tirano Intergaláctico, Violence In The Veins, Zegema Beach Records, Bent Nail, Dingleberry Records
Anyone already familiar with Crossed will know pretty much what you’re getting here. For the uninitiated, this is an absolutely bone-shattering hardcore from Madrid featuring members of other notable Spanish bands like Boneflower, Descubriendo a Mr. Mime and Eros + Massacre.
Purposefully released on Valentine’s day this year, Barely Buried Love might be an album revolving around the theme of love but it’s anything but a poppy love song record. The album consists of 13 ripping tracks that are technical as hell and done with such conviction and aggression they obliterate anything out there to be honest.
Barely Buried Love is a fierce and calculated chaos at most times, but Crossed can be pretty atmospheric too. In their songwriting, they have passed any school and course a modern hardcore band can enter and then some. Try to cross some massive metallic shreds in the veins of Converge with the epic and unpredictable screamo twists of Majority Rule, then add some dark and sludgy His Hero Is Gone vibes on top of devastating blast beats and chainsaw-riffs at frenzied pace, and the result will evidently be a crushing record like this one.
Barely Buried Love is an all-consuming record, well crafted and played to a high standard for the genre. Surely will recommend it as one of the best European hardcore/screamo records of the year. Crossed have succeeded in making it intense!
