There’s no obfuscation on The Crooked Skulls‘ debut full-length, Midnight Sun. The New Jersey crunch-riffers come right at you with it: thick tones, gravel-throated vocals, and an overarching groove somewhere between slower Orange Goblin and classic Corrosion of Conformity, leaving room for a bit of shove in “Skull Bong” and “Broken” while the mostly-instrumental “Slowsteal” cuts the pace and unfolds with an airier solo in its second half as part of a righteously nodding culmination. Elsewhere, the urgency of centerpiece “Let Me Out” reminds of The Obsessed riding the line between rock and doom, and the penultimate “Iron Smile” brings no less than Fu Manchu‘s Bob Balch in for an expectedly shredding guest guitar spot. Even there, The Crooked Skulls aren’t up to anything too fancy. They’re not looking to dizzy you with complexity so much as dizzy you with a fist upside the head, and that edge of East Coast confrontationalism becomes part of what makes their material feel so immediate in its execution right unto closer “Judgement Day,” which holds its burl through the finish. No tricks, but songs.

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