doll-like mEtals and fOresticks
crxw

4 TRACKS (15:34) // 07/08/2026


crxw’s greatest EP to date encompasses four sprawling, heavy, overwhelming tracks, taking a deep dive into their darker industrial repertoire with a pinch of madness, recording most of the project on real hardware.


An integral part of any music release is its visual identity: the square cover art’s role hasn’t changed much at all over the course of music history. It’s much easier to take the dive nowadays, (one click as opposed to a hefty purchase) but the rate at which information is served has been drastically increased. You need to stand out.
doll-like mEtals’s cover art grips the wandering listener very well whilst managing their expectations: dark, bordering on macabre. Very human-like, yet so far detached from the accepted societal image. Environments flowing with an unknown purpose… where is she even looking? The style seen in artworks like | All, i have,,, and the *???* EP is expanded upon, leaning further into realism, employing no distinct lineart, opting for softer edges and shading. The subdued wordmarking is appreciated - it’s very in-the-background, transparent to the cover’s composition. But if you’re looking for it, all the necessary info’s there.
I also particularly enjoy the visualizer: the artwork is writhing, shaking, strobing. Chromatic aberration introduces wild strokes of color into an otherwise desaturated image, datamoshing seeks to deform the image like distortion pedals do to sound. The music’s energy and dynamic range is matched well throughout the video: it’s very much akin to the POSTAL Redux soundtrack's visualizers, and I’ve always known I need more of such a style.

I think these songs fit best for me during a walk through the outskirts of a city under construction, way past midnight. There’s this lingering feeling that you’re not quite supposed to be here, and yet nothing that’s actually there is truly opposed to you, because it’s too far removed from reality to even sway one way or the other. Sleep for the sun is waking for the moon.
This EP can hit hard: breakbeats and roaring basslines are plentiful like beasts in the night. Levels of distortion are cranked and toyed with to a masochistic extreme, but never distastefully. Some moments can be trippy, dissonant, otherworldly in the ambient noises and synth lines. The tracks can even try to be cute, hence “doll-like”, courtesy of the Vocaloids featured on the project, though such moments feel almost out of place, in their own special way.


Indeed, crxw has wielded digital idols as aces up their sleeve for a while, but this time feels different. Maybe it’s the cover art providing juxtaposition, maybe it’s the vibes these instrumentals provide - these familiar voices are uncannier to hear than usual amidst these absurd soundscapes. Like every bit of shallow joy you receive from Hatsune Miku and Tone Rion can and will be taken from you at a moment’s notice.
That’s exactly how the record starts: poppy, four-on-the-floor vocaloid jams. Enough edge to make one think it’s as hard as it’ll get. Then, the plunge to hell, exactly a minute in. A masterful transition: the first drop sets the tone just right. I didn’t even realize what just hit me on my first listen. That brings me to what sets this record apart: how much of a living, breathing organism it resembles: it ebbs and flows beautifully. The arrangement can be described by many words, but never “blocky” - it oftentimes feels like the artist’s brain channeled into mine; a telepathic monologue the likes of which I can’t help but listen to on high alert. Of course, structure isn’t entirely forgone: you can always point out highs and lows; drops, verses and breaks. But it’s the front-to-back experience and progression you’re missing when describing intensity as a graph.
In short: there are no boundaries to what can happen in these tracks. It doesn’t even sound like the process of pulling out a whole new synth patch and pattern is noteworthy anymore: it just happens because it wants to. b1o,,,bl–dline generally feels like a slower-paced track in its arrangement, taking the time to opt for full-on ambient segments, but it still has straight up machine gun basses. I didn’t consider how tight-knit the web of synthesized or otherwise otherworldly instruments was until the piano hit at the end of س & despised,. The amount of different chops and cuts, whether it be in the drums or noise, present in down,right resolut,ion, is amazing.


Speaking of which, the final track is the absolute highlight by a long shot for me. It’s the piece that piqued my interest in the first place, and the other three tracks haven’t changed the relative rankings at all.
I interpret this title as some kind of graph heading down and to the right: a decline in status over the course of time. A breakdown of some sorts. “Resolution” as in finality; the culmination of the EP in an entirely instrumental pandemonium. Each and every element of the production contributes to a knotty, chaotic sound that’s arguably a very rare find in crxw’s discography. Yes, the other projects can get heavy, they can get choppy and messy, but this is much different. Ruthless, unrelenting, moving at breakneck speeds.

The intro’s staggering, choppy, acidic bassline is largely reminiscent of a modernized rendition of braindance. Particularly when paired with the break part’s high, pitch-bent sawtooth chords; sounds a lot like Aphex Twin's Cock/ver10. Such obvious, almost pretentious comparisons are immediately discredited and made puny when it hits you how much further beyond this beast of a track reaches in levels of brain-fucking: the metallic, clanging percussion element starts stealing the show the moment it starts contributing the brunt of the force in a grindcore-like flurry of unfiltered, programmatic noise-fury.
The clanging sound is arguably the most iconic part of the track: the way it dictates the flow of the complex web of drums, demands your full attention, and riffs out crazy melodic lines at the same time is genuinely sick. Don’t let that stop you from paying attention to the moment-to-moment arrangement decisions: that stuff’s downright incomprehensible. I can’t visualize and break down the individual elements well whatsoever, in the best way. It’s overwhelming, leaving me wanting more and more. It feels as if every element was treated so that it would be interesting every single bar, even in isolation. It’s ironic, because if you do think of each element in isolation, it seems improbable that anything this good would come out of it. Pressing a few keys on any of these synths, laying down a basic drum beat with these 909-esque drums, listening to the noise chops, none of it would’ve struck me as golden. And yet, that’s the beauty of using hardware in the age of software, and imposing creative limitations upon oneself in general; knowing your instrument inside out, and even still being surprised by what it can truly do. “Challenge” works like Ophidian's Main Sequence EP have shown me three times over that the source sound doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you write with it.

Even the seemingly simple main motif of this track is hard to grasp on an emotional level. Is it melancholic, euphoric, neutral, bored, pumped, angry? You’d think letting choir-like voices take the lead would clear things up, but the dream-like bed of vocal texture only strengthens the mental fog I experience. So many voices. Hence, my interpretation of the title.


And guess what? A lot of the praise I may sing about that one track can really be applied to all of them, in warped bits and pieces.
doll-like mEtals and fOresticks is an outstanding, concise, no-nonsense package of crxw’s heaviest, most intriguing production yet. This release will stand the test of time better than most: it’s clear this project was made with unrivaled volumes of passion. A hell of a good time, troves of relistening value.