An Autumn for Crippled Children have cultivated mystery since their beginnings, at the turn of the 2010s. This Dutch trio, long kept anonymous, became the bard of a diaphanous blackgaze, in which the roughness of black metal dissolves into synth layers, buried pop melodies and a deliberately misty production. Closure, hailed by the critics (an 82 average across six reviews), offers perhaps its most accomplished variation.
What the press praise is the constancy of an immediately recognisable signature. With this band, sadness is never demonstrative: it surfaces, it envelops, it bathes each track in an autumnal light. The screamed voice, distant, almost drowned in the mix, acts less as an aggression than as a melancholy breath.
Musically, Closure fully assumes its aesthetic of blur: the guitars shimmer beneath a coat of reverb, the keyboards trace pastel horizons, the rhythms maintain a hushed pulse. This is a music of contemplation, of introspection, favouring atmosphere over impact.
This immersion has a cost: by dint of uniformity, the record at times skirts monotony, and the hurried listener will struggle to tell the tracks apart. One must consent to getting lost in it, to letting it flow, to savour its bittersweet beauty.
Verdict: 8/10. An enveloping, sincere record, for crepuscular souls. The mist, here, is a form of tenderness.
