Crowning, the Chicago trio whose membership includes Frail Body leader Lowell Shaffer, are a serious force in the mutually supportive screamo underground, and they’re always down to release a split with another band. Crowning have a bunch of splits to their name. The way they do the splits, bitch, their pants might rip. Two years after they dropped a serious one with Baltimore’s Eyelet, and now they’ve got a huge new one with a band from Japan.
I was unfamiliar with Oaktails, the Japanese screamo band that released the full-length debut What I Think / What I Love last year. I will not be unfamiliar anymore. Crowning’s two contributions, “Luxor Surrealism” and “Jung Money, Freud Problems,” are both great, whirling-monster tracks with metal riffs and grandiose crescendos and jumpy energy. (Great titles, too.) But the Oaktails tracks, “Winter Call” and “Dazzling Dress,” might be even more violently expressive. Stream the split below.
