10 Extremely Underrated Crust Albums

If you’re looking to get antisocial with your listening habits, crust is calling your name.

With a baked-in filthy production, fetish for d-beat drum parts and a complete disdain for legible vocals, crust is often found at the outermost layers of the metal scene, right beside pornogrind and whatever Gutalax is.

So check out these underrated crust albums!

Skitsystem fans, here’s another batch of Swedish crust that’ll scratch that d-beat itch. Knivad’s first album picked up in a similar place to where Skitsystem left off with Stigmata — heavy on that Boss pedal tone with a fierce punk influence.

With a guitar tone that bridges the filthiest gap between death metal and crust, England’s Yersin stay aggressive on their 2020 full-length, Guilt. The clean vocals come in as a giant surprise at first, but they blend extremely well with the harsh rasps that follow. Killer stuff.

Crust from Spain that wields a massive black metal influence — that’s Amhra. The Venom influence here is ripe, sticking to a simple and dirty approach… then suddenly the fucking Dissection influence kicks in. What a fun spin.

Enough with the party crust, here’s some existential misery. Germany’s Welk scream into the abyss on their 2017 album, Sein, which means “To Be.” This record floats between black metal, post metal, gaze and crust punk… and it somehow finds the perfect production to make it all feel seamless. 

This list would be incomplete without some Japanese lo-fi crust, so enjoy this beautiful mess from Asocial Terror Fabrication. Just the sloppiest, most warehouse-dwelling, gain-heaviest worship of early grind.

Back to the single-word bands. Zyanose lean heavy into the noise side of crust, formulating a psychotic blend of hardcore punk that’s almost indistinguishable from radio static. It’s damn good though, so blast this if you’re feeling particularly antisocial. 

Ahhhhh some sludgy crust! The primordial ooze of post-metal and sludge makes Fall of Efrafa’s Inlé one of the best kept secrets of the late 2000s. These guys had an incredible ear for melody, going almost post-hardcore with their angst. 

This isn’t sludge — it’s tar. And it’s also one of the most unhinged crust albums you’ll ever be accosted by.  Sea of Deprivation was a one-and-done band from Arizona who dropped Catharsis in Disharmony in the year 2000 and then fucked off. Misanthropy in a nutshell.

Can’t forget the vile Russian crust scene. Maybe the best use of a mid-2000s Line 6 guitar tone ever, Tarpan almost certainly dwell in some post-industrial silo. The Abyss is basically a crust album with pornogrind production. 

If Amhra is a black metal band in crusty pajamas, Fasad is a crust band in corpsepaint. From Portland, Maine, Fasad’s blackened crust is perfect for your local flop house. With just the right amount of melodic punk thrown in, The End is 14 minutes of time well spent.