Trap Them‘s Darker Handcraft will stream HERE in its entirety until its release on March 15, courtesy of NPR.

“For those familiar with the band, Darker Handcraft‘s first three tracks sound like the Trap Them we know and love: fast D-beat drums and the buzzsaw guitar of the Swedish death-metal legends in Entombed. Converge’s Kurt Ballou returns to produce, and makes cuts like these burst with a razor-sharp sound. But in the Converge-esque ‘Every Walk a Quarantine’, even he must have been like, “Guys, come on, I’m in the other room.” That aside, the real work starts with the swaggering ‘Evictionaries’ and the three songs that follow.

The single-note runs that define Kurt Ballou’s signature guitar style are thickened and slowed down slightly by Brian Izzi in ‘All by the Constant’,” a dizzying contrast to drummer Chris Maggio’s muscular punk tantrums. A Southwestern twang turns into a sinister zombie-walk interlude in ‘Sordid Earnings’ before launching into what will likely become Trap Them’s defining song: ‘The Facts’.  At one time, “I am that goddamned son of a bitch” was the kind of vocal hook only a band like Blood Brothers could get away with, but vocalist Ryan McKenney draws out the line like feral demon. And are those keyboards pounding in the recesses of the chorus? (Maybe the Blood Brothers comparison isn’t so far off.)

The latter half of Darker Handcraft largely favors Trap Them’s grindcore roots, with pummeling minute-long songs unleashing a swirl of kick-punches to the face. But in its final two tracks, there’s an until-now-untapped doomier side that’s particularly satisfying” – Lars Gotrich/NPR.

Continue reading:  First Listen: Trap Them, ‘Darker Handcraft’ : NPR.