I’m back again with more Belgian Hardcore pride. We hadn’t have the opportunity to review the CRAWLSPACE LP yet. And with the new release on Good Life Recordings in the background, it’s time to do that.

“Enter The Realm Of Chaos” is one of those nasty releases on FINAL BEATDOWN Recordings, a sub-label of Good Life Recordings. This sub-label sprouted from Ed’s visionary view way back in time. Amongst releases from E-Town Concrete, Breakdown, Trapped In Life and Stigmata we find this jewel of Crawlspace. As if Good Life felt the rise of beat-down influenced hardcore coming. And there’s no denial that his vision has become reality now…

It’s a fine tradition that the vinyl-pressing machines aren’t cleaned out when switching colors at Good Life. So it seems that also for Final Beatdown this is the case. There are to my knowledge a Black and a White version. The common sense tells us there must be some  white / grey mix copies to. Well there are, here you see the proof of the GREY MARBLED transitional copies’ existence.

Grey marbled vinyl: transitional copy between Black and plain White

The artwork can be classified in the genre of death-metal and is done by the collectible artist Kris Verwimp who also did the artwork for Liar’s first release. Looking at his delivery, a gifted artist.

Front Cover by Kris Verwimp

Back Cover also by Kris Verwimp

Listen to a couple of songs here, the first song “New Breed” is from the new album called ‘Carved Into Flesh’. The others are from this release, from the split release with Full Court Press, and from their Mid-CD on Released Power Productions…

As the straight from hell scenery on the cover might suggest, this music is no traditional hardcore. Down beated parts are varied with fast death metal parts. Brutal vocals carve their way through this album. If you listen to the contemporary fully established beatdown bands you will realize that this was way ahead of it’s time, pioneered their sound in the late nineties already…

Critically we must also add on a sidenote that the Hip Hop influence in contemporary beatdown, is nowhere to be found in this release though. But more the extremer metal, like grindcore and deathcore are used as influence on their sound…

So far the retro-review of this Limburg band. Hope you enjoyed it…

-FF