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CROWSBLOOD
Bridge To Golgotha

Macho (2026)
Rating: 8/10

With their brand of dark metal, Bradford, England-based clan Crowsblood returns from the mist with Bridge To Golgotha, a stirring debut full-length composition of frustratingly short duration (35 minutes) and featuring two songs (‘The Murder Of Crows’ and ‘Gallows Of Souls’) which appeared on their 2024 The Murder Of Crows demo. Even so, this album remains highly anticipated as the foursome of Kris McLaughlin (vocals and guitar), Lee Baines (guitar), Paul Ellis (bass) and Aki Butt (drums) hammer out slab after slab of folk horror inspired blackened death metal.

If you’re already familiar with the brace of cuts from the demo then skip this bit, but if not then you’re in for a treat. The melodic zip of ‘The Murder Of Crows’ has a strong blackish element, contrasted somewhat by the more classic style of death metal vocal. Crowsblood never rest on their laurels though because the track makes several shifts while the percussion maintains a clanking plod to add extra rawness. ‘Gallows Of Souls’ is cut from the same cloth as the echoes of the guttural vocals drift like cold air over a doomier strain of snaking guitar work.

Several months previous to the release of this offering, Crowsblood announced their returned by premiering what would become the opening track to the album, that being ‘Plague Bringer’. Beginning with a thorny tangle of skidding blackened axe work, Crowsblood opt for demonic hypertension reliant on a spiked thrash mesh before the vocals slither into the fray. It’s a very organic sound that the combo relays to their audience. The somewhat brash and heavily brambled labyrinth of sound keeps a steady sense of dread, even with those angular fits which contrast nicely with the earthy backbone and guttural chokes.

‘Golgotha’ takes me back to the early 90s bleak doom scene; this cut wouldn’t seem out of place on the Peaceville Records label. It initially creeps with a despondent air, the guitars aching under the weight of their own gloom as the drums toll like a rusty churchyard bell. However, at just over the one minute mark the band brings bluster and a more classic death metal haste. It’s all still heavily coated in silt to the point that one can feel the peat bog stench invade the nostrils.

The same can be said for the weighty clunks on ‘Cursed In Blood’ where the bass really does come to the fore. The vocals remain dirtied by sodden earth as the rhythms alter to more melodious, blackened twists. ‘Wolves Of Purgatory’ has more of an icier rush to its instrumentation, cascading axe work briskly tumbling to leave black glassy streaks in its wake.

It’s good to see some other style injected into the UK extreme metal underground as I’ve been bludgeoned a lot recently by British death and thrash metal. Crowsblood dishes out something archaic and as old as the West Yorkshire hills where they reside. Displaying Gothic blackened horror and black metal grandeur, Bridge To Golgotha combs the still smouldering ruins of quintessentially British folk horror, permanently staining your psyche with its sense of foreboding and dread.

Neil Arnold

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