Despite the childishly innocuous album title, Fuck the Universe by Craft is a solid, well produced, strongly written piece of pissed off black metal with hints of headiness that never veer too far into the "pretentious bullshit" category. It stays savage and ugly, skirting that horizon that separates the Darkthrones from the Deathspell Omegas, the progressive from the "faithful" I suppose. This is the band that arguably paved the way for the recent influx of intelligent-but-deadly new wave of black metal i.e Antaeus and pretty much the entire French black metal scene.

Craft, like most black metal, is a struggle to critique. Perhaps it’s because of the style’s inherent nihilism, which usually leads to music that’s either to bland to be looked at or too terrible to take seriously, so when a band like Craft comes along, you just have to sort of hear it for yourself and let the music kick your ass, then take what you want from it. The plus side is Craft gives you something of a variety to take from, as their songs have much more going on than most black metal acts. If you’re looking for classic Celtic Frost power, then you’ve got it. If you’re looking for the ugly extremity of early Mayhem, you’ve got it. And other stuff too.

Just listen to a track like "Demonspeed", which blurs the lines between mournful brooding and demonic war cries, paying homage to the scope the genre offers at its best. Tracks like "Thorns in the Planet’s Side" and the title track sound off in a mid-tempo barb-wire bludgeoning that Satyricon attempted in the same year. Where as that band succeeded only in creating lame-ass bro-anthems for Headbanger’s Ball jockholes, Craft stays true (no pun intended) to the dark roots of underground black metal, giving fans of the often maligned sub-genre something to feel proud of.

Craft find a perfect balance with this record, successfully evolving beyond mere Norway imitators into a band to hold others against in comparison.

Written By: Nick Benoitschwitz