Metal's favourite Alaskans are still firing on all cylinders on their fifth album.

If you wanted any sort of indication as to how important the UK metal scene can be to American bands, you shouldn’t look much further than 36 Crazyfists. Ever since the band first hit these shores back in 2002 with their major label debut Bitterness The Star, the support they've received has been unwavering and dedicated, leading Roadrunner UK to resign the band after they left the entire label in difficult circumstances back in 2006. There’s always been a large backing for this band on this side of the pond, and they deserve the full support of the biggest metal label in the country. Yet regardless of any and all problems, 36CF have still continued to write, record and tour without any real let up, and their fifth album Collisions and Castaways is yet another solid combination of hard rock, metal and melody.

This is certainly not a band that ever pretended to reinvent the wheel, but there’s never been any mistaking 36CF’s sound. It’s a noise that’s never quite been 100% metallic, but has always been too heavy to be truly rock, marking the band out as something of a unique proposition. Having said that, Collisions has the distinction of being perhaps the heaviest and angriest album of the band’s career. Inparticular, Brock Lindow’s vocal delivery is certainly more savage than we’re used to, and his raw screams are all over openers In The Midnights and Whitewater. Both are filled with densely thick riffage, and the latter is as close to a thrash metal tune that the band have ever come to. Of course, melody hasn’t been sacrificed for the sake of heaviness, as is evidenced by first single Reviver. Perhaps the most outwardly emotional song on the record with a rousing, moving chorus, it also rocks like a bastard. Then again, the whole album does.

There are few bands as dedicated, hard-working and consistent at delivering as 36 Crazyfists, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Collisions and Castaways is another impressive addition to their back catalogue. As the years go by, here’s a band that have only gotten better at their craft, and the evidence is all over this album.

Iwan Lehnert