Freshly released on Friday 23rd January was Crystal Lake’s sixth full-length studio album “The Weight Of Sound”, via Century Media Records. The release of “The Weight Of Sound” marks a big return to the international Metal Music scene for Crystal Lake, after a seven year gap from the release of previous album “Helix”. If you’re not familiar with Crystal Lake, they’re a metalcore band, hailing from Tokyo, Japan and they formed in 2002. Crystal Lake are: John Robert Centorrino (Vocals), Yudai Miyamoto (Guitars), Hisatsugu Taji (Guitars), Mitsuru (Bass) and Gaku Taura (Drums).
The album “The Weight Of Song” is the band’s first album without longstanding members Ryo Kinoshita and Shinya Hori; the band are, however, a quintet again for the first time since 2010. The album itself is heavily inspired by the bands journey, aspects and reflections throughout the years, as Yudai Miyamoto shares: “Before I realised it, Crystal Lake has been active for 23 long years. People often say, “time flies” but the truth is that we’ve carved out a long history together with friends, bandmates and fellow musicians sharing blood, sweat and countless struggles to build this band. That is an undeniable fact and my pride. Each note we play becomes harmony, and that harmony becomes music. Playing that music together with comrades is what makes a band. And the music a band creates can give birth to a new culture. Our new album “The Weight Of Sound” is a reflection of that way of life.”
The album comprises eleven songs, which we can’t wait to get stuck into. Notable on this album is the heavy presence of guest vocalists, with five of the eleven tracks featuring vocal talent from outside.
The album opener is called “Everblack” which features guest vocals from David Simonich of Signs of the Swarm. “Everblack” starts the album off fast and loud, with raw, intense and passionate screams and deep growls from the first second. The instrumentals are also incredibly passionate, almost coming across as a back and forth battle between the guitars and drums through out the entire track. We found “Everblack” to be a real kick-ass way of opening an album.
The second track is “BludGod”, featuring guest vocals from Taylor Barber of Left to Suffer. We particularly enjoyed the intro to this track, as it feels like it’s a little teaser of what’s about to come, with the catchy rhythm heard throughout the track. The track turns very quickly towards a heavier beat, with all the instruments creating a perfect harmony, which is followed up and accompanied by super powerful and intense vocal work. We also really enjoyed the little touch of a choir-like feel to the vocals towards the end of the track, with the track overall giving us hints of a Linkin Park type vibe.
The third track is called “Neversleep”, which again features guest vocals, this time from Myke Terry of Fire From the Gods and Volumes. We found this track to be a bit of a head-bopper, especially around the parts featuring visceral roars and barking screams. Although we are finding that, so far the vocal and instrumental styles are broadly similar across all of the first three tracks; we feel that Crystal Lake still manage to make each track a little unique by adding snips of different sounds to their work.
The fourth track is called “King Down”, which is another rapidly paced and pretty catchy track. The track features ominous lyrics like “This is not just catastrophe” which, when combined with the thundering instrumentals, given the feeling of a battle raging on behind the scenes – the title “King Down” really starts to make sense in this context. It’s one of the shorter tracks on the album, but is no less powerful, with some heavy riffs and powerful screams through out.
The fifth track is called “The Undertow”, which features guest vocals from Karl Schubach, formerly of progressive metalcore pioneers Misery Signals. This track runs at a slightly slower tempo that the four previous tracks, but we really enjoyed how this track brings us a somewhat nostalgic feeling, almost as if we’re listening to a track from the 2010’s (where we confess to having a lot of good memories). We also really enjoyed the grittiness of this track, which we feel is something sometimes missing from the polished sound of contemporary metalcore; this gritty characteristic is shared with the sixth track, which is the title track for the album named “The Weight Of Sound”. While we’ve already commented on just how much we enjoyed the nostalgia, we also rated how “The Weight Of Sound” mixes cleaner vocals in alongside the screams and growls to create something complex and layered. We can understand why Crystal Lake might’ve chosen this track as the title track, as it does a great job of conveying those feelings of reflection on the journey so far.
The seventh track is called “Crossing Nails”, which we found to be a real highlight of the album. We really appreciated how catchy and energetic the intro was, which carried over well into the remainder of the track. The vocals in this song also come across as raw and gritty, which offer an unfiltered look into the emotions behind the band’s journey – the reflections that inspire this album are just as open about the rough as they are with the smooth, giving an end result of an unashamedly honest piece of work.
The eighth track is called “Dystopia”, which features guest vocals from Jesse Leach of Killswitch Engage. When listening through to this track, it struck us that around halfway through the album, there has been a slight shift in the style and composition of the songs. While the earlier tracks tended to start super energetic and aggressive, the later tracks are starting with a slightly softer energy that gradually builds up to an energetic crescendo, helped along by the intense and raw vocals. This particular track features some really visceral, almost demonic growls that we couldn’t help but want to imitate as we listened along to it.
The ninth track is called “Sinner”. The intro to this track is absolutely beautiful, opening with a soft female voice choir before breaking down into a hard-hitting metal track; the use of a choir to create that spiritual atmosphere works brilliantly for a song with a title like “Sinner” in our opinion. Despite the vocals throughout this track being mainly rough vocals, we love how the female voice choir vocals still persist throughout in the background, singing the same lyrics as the lead vocals, which adds a spiritual and calming contrast to the whole track.
The tenth track is called “Don’t Breathe”. Even though this track starts suddenly with some shocking energy, we found a highlight in how catchy the move softly sung chorus sounds contrasted against the aggressive screams and growls.
The final track, serving as something of a bonus track, is called “Come Wave”. “Come Wave” has something of a romantic ballad feel to it, sitting in complete contrast to the rest of the album. The vocals are unexpectedly clean, soft and almost angelic. We found a big Linkin Park feeling to this song, most reminiscent of “Good Goodbye”; one of Chester Bennington’s last recorded songs. We also found it to be an effective closer for the album, with the louder growling vocals at the end of the song completing a cycle of sorts, ending the album as it began.
We thought that “The Weight Of Sound” album was generally good; we weren’t massively familiar with Crystal Lake’s work before listening “The Weight Of Sound” through, so we can’t do much in the way of comparison. Perhaps, considering the lineup changes, this might be a good thing, as the Crystal Lake of 2026 look to be a considerably different proposition. We especially enjoyed some of the later songs on the album, which overall felt sufficiently complex, well-layered and reflective, demonstrating the band’s capacity to evolve. This didn’t detract from the rough and raw emotion however, which only enhanced the overall contrast. While we did like the earlier tracks, we felt that the first four tracks sounded a little bit too much alike at times. We loved the overall concept of the album as a reflection and we really felt what the band was trying to communicate clearly. With the lineup changes, we’re hoping for even more evolution from Crystal Lake in the future; they’ve successfully illustrated their past, so we can’t help but wonder where they go next?