Crobot: still stoned, but heavier and darker

Motherbrain is a leap forward for the Pennsylvanian band Crobot

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Crobot - Motherbrain
(Image: © Mascot Records)

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Crobot - Motherbrain

Crobot - Motherbrain

(Image credit: Mascot Records)

1. Burn
2. Keep Me Down
3. Drown
4. Low Life
5. Alpha Dawg
6. Stoning The Devil
7. Gasoline
8. Destroyer
9. Blackout
10. After Life
11. The Hive

In the three years since their album Welcome To Fat City, Crobot have matured, nurturing a heavier, darker side to their familiar stoner-related approach. 

The result is this fulminating, deliberating collection of tracks which leans towards Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots as much as it dips into the southern rock style that has long underpinned their style. 

Vocalist Brandon Yeagley and guitarist Chris Bishop are irresistible, combining as a lowslung, moody alliance on the parched rhythms of Stoning The Devil and the desolate-highway kinship of Gasoline. 

Meanwhile, the slithering, bluesy juice of The Hive will be among the finest tracks of 2019. 

Motherbrain is Crobot coming of age.

Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.