Crawl Through Knives is probably one of my favorite IF songs. It just works so well. The band could've been just fine continuing with a style similar to RtR or CC. A more modern style without compromising much of their musical integrity. Also would've helped to hire a separate clean vocalist lol.
They just never seemed comfortable with any kind of identity. It's ironic that people call their post-Clayman work evolution, because they actually never evolved a sound, they just moved to a different one. Colony > Clayman is the closest they came to evolving a sound, although admittedly that was basically from perfect to perfect, so not much else to do there. I suppose you could say LS > Sub > TJR > Whoracle as well, albeit the makeup of the band was totally different back then. From Reroute onwards their production values were all over the place, which doesn't help when trying to achieve any kind of consistent sound. It's nice to try new things, obviously, but it felt more to me like they were never comfortable with themselves and their output. Not enough to evolve a sound further, anyway.
I don't think they needed a separate clean vocalist, Anders was fine with the right production. Granted he could never do it live, but at least back then the clean vocals on the album were imperfect too, so it was less jarring live. ASOP was where they started going overboard with trying to make Anders sound far better at cleans then he really is, and it only got worse from there. If you listen to Come Clarity (the song) for instance, the clean singing on there is actually not very good at all. I'd even go as far as to say it's pretty bad. So, when it sounds bad live too, then that's not a surprise.
I actually like that Nita Strauss song, tbh.
Crawl Through Knives is a highlight of CC for sure. I remember my MSN group at the time calling it the "gayest song" on the album. I think it's a little too eager to get to the chorus, but when the chorus is that good, it kind of makes sense.
I came across this song last year and the main riff here is quite similar to the main riff in CTK. Came out two years earlier than Come Clarity, too.
I seem to remember the reaction on the Everdying forums at the time was quite positive towards CTK. STYE was widely hated so CTK and CC as a whole was a relief to a lot of people. On CTK they do go to the chorus a lot, but one thing I would say in their defence is that they change it up a lot, the choruses all have some kind of variation to them which helps make it sound fresh throughout the song.
One other thing I like about CTK, and CC in general, is the tasteful use of electronics. They add to all of the songs without coming across as overbearing or out of place.
Even though I don't like that Illdisposed song, I can hear what you mean regarding the CTK riff. Definitely similarities.
although to be fair whilst I like a handful of Alice Cooper tracks, I've zero interest in Aerosmith or the Sex Pistols, or Johnny Depp for that matter, so I'm okay with not knowing those bands.
