Around the time that In Flames and Soilwork both had commercial breakthroughs during the early 2000s, The Crown seemed like the next great Swedish hope, especially after the confidence and dominance that enveloped 2000’s Deathrace King and 2002’s Tomas Lindberg-fronted Crowned In Terror.  But, by 2004, The Crown imploded, with members splitting off into the various tentacles (new bands, side projects) that usually accompany the messy business of breakups. When The Crown eventually reunited in 2010 with Doomsday King, just enough time had passed for the group’s return to be met with aren’t-we-glad-they’re-back fanfare, though the band, even in its second incarnation, failed to fully grasp the At The Gates-esque rewards that were considered realistic almost 15 years ago.

Which windingly leads us to latest record, Death Is Not Dead. That’s a reassuring album title, to be sure: through it, The Crown lets it be known that it remembers a time when extreme music for extreme people was a life creed, and Stockholm Death’s down-tuned dirt was royalty. Though stylistically distinct from Entombed, Dismember, Grave et al, The Crown always embodied those bands in spirit and in fire, and that remains unchanged on Death Is Not Dead, giving its title even more credence. What The Crown has done - to much success, let’s add - in the here and now is take its Deathrace King template and inject a sense of organic granularity (complete with grime-encased production), one that assures that the songs remain fast as a shark but have feel and life that operate on levels that aren’t simply speed-kills-so-let’s-kill-with-speed.

This kind of stylistic maneuvering suits The Crown, the band for the first time writing a record that is about more than just BPMs or Kerry King solos (which are both fine in their own right, of course). This kind of robust song-writing is where The Haunted could have gone when it wanted to expand out of its limited squared circle (instead of The Dead Eye’s alt-rock) and, hey, there’s plenty of lessons here that modern-day In Flames would do well to heed to.  Even if The Crown might never fulfill the commercial promise that was hoped for more than a decade ago, its artistic vision and scope have benefited greatly with the arrival of Death Is Not Dead.