Crypts of Despair's second album, All Light Swallowed (2021), was one of the most promising underground death metal albums of recent years. While not necessarily unique, that album distinguished itself through a masterful mixture—blending cavernous death-doom with brutal, blackened undertones to create something that stood apart via its vital rendition of oft-trodden tropes. It's rather disappointing then, that We Belong in the Grave is about as unremarkable as they come, with the band ditching the foundations of their sound for more modern and mundane textures.
We Belong in the Grave is a deathcore album, and a painfully generic one at that. Deathcore is arguably in a better (and certainly more popular) place than it's ever been right now, and I'm all for bands adding new sides to their sound, but Crypts of Despair have seemingly done so at the expense of everything that previously set them apart. From the electronic atmospherics and multiple sub-drops that open the album's title-track, to the djentrified guitar tones and unrecognisable blackened screeches and guttural gasps inseminating from vocalist Jonas Kanevičius, it's immediately clear that the band have taken a different approach for this record. However, in fully committing to this new approach, they've also done away with everything recognisable and compelling about their previous sound in the process.
As deathcore albums go, We Belong in the Grave is fine enough. There's plenty here that could be compared to bands like Brand of Sacrifice, earlier Lorna Shore or even Whitechappel, except that all of those bands recent releases absolutely blow this out of the water (and I say that as someone who was severely disappointed by Pain Remains (2022)). Where the band do attempt to set themselves apart is in the addition of Ulcerate-esque atmospheric sections. Alas, these are few and far between and are even more unremarkable than the record's main course, not to mention that such fare has itself become fairly par for the course. If We Belong in the Grave was as good as Lifeblood (2021) or Hymns in Dissonance (2025), this review would be taking a different tone, and I'd be fine with Crypts of Despair taking theirs. As it is though, there are a million other bands out there making albums that sound more or less exactly like this one. A lot of them are worse, but a lot of them are also significantly better.
I've had to check multiple times whether this is even the same band that made All Light Swallowed albums (or even if I got sent the wrong promo by mistake somehow?), but no; besides new guitarist Tautvydas Kartanas, this is the same group of guys who were responsible for that record. They just decided to make this one for some reason. Their previous outings suggested Crypts of Despair were an outstanding and worthy prospect within the world of extreme metal—and they may well still be—but anyone could have made this.