Crytopsy's drummer Flo Mounier is the same age as I am, but while I'm waking up with the aches of pains that grind deeper with every year of Middle Age, the guy sounds like he's jacked into some cybernetic shit, the living embodiment of his drum kit that makes every blast beat, double bass roll and tempo change as effortless as the input of a single key on a keyboard. Like brutal death metal is some binary language in his genetic code that automatically enables his hands and feet. The fact that the rest of his band isn't left behind his capability is a testament to how well they lock together, and due to this consistency and intensity, As Gomorrah Burns is the best album the band has put out during the McGachy-fronted era, trouncing the competent s/t from the previous decade, and the ensuing EPs, though not by a necessarily large margin.
The caveat is that this is the same, frenzied, modern tech/brutal death Crytopsy that they arguably always were, but had kind of faded into the background after a thousand other bands caught up with their skills and energy. It's a vortex of blasting death metal rhythms that alternate with thrashier, choppy outbreaks for pure neck-jerking, and rarely gets any slower than that. It's highly mechanistic sounding, and feels just like a lot of other works in the genre where individual tracks can lack the distinction of classic DM tunes. That said, they do keep some of those progressive, melodic breaks that were developed across the last EPs, and there are some formidable leads in between the grooving and thrusting, where the listener can get a little more atmosphere, something much of the brickwork brutality is lacking. The Mounier/Donaldson/Pinard trifecta is a virtual storm of limbs that never tires, and while McGachy's vocals still aren't as unique as a Lord Worm, he's well literate in this style and offers enough flexibility and professionalism that I'd consider this his best performance to date with the band; though he still clearly lacks the status of legendary growlers and snarlers you could pick out of a lineup.
As Gomorrah Burns gets better the more the band sticks its neck out for new ideas, like the flighty little melodic noodling that opens "Flayed the Swine" or the the dissonant thundering that "Obeisant" works up to. In fact, I'd love to hear the band just stretch even further into making the most weird and progressive BDM they can, though maybe not as loose and weird as something like Once Was Not or the lamentable And Then You'll Beg. But there is just so much latent musical potential here to explore even more psychotic vistas of extremity than what we're hearing. That's not to take away from this particular album, which has plenty of 'oh shit!' moments and is enjoyable whenever I'm in the mood for this style, but I still think there's room for more interesting songwriting, even if they take more breathers and don't feel the need to dizzy and impress us all the time. Wishful thinking aside, though, there's no reason the audience of brutal tech/death finesse would find much lacking in this 33-minute exercise in extremity, chalk full of the Canadians' patented weaponry.
Verdict: Win [7.75/10]
https://linktr.ee/Cryptopsy
Showing posts with label cryptopsy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cryptopsy. Show all posts
Friday, March 15, 2024
Cryptopsy - As Gomorrah Burns (2023)
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Cryptopsy - The Book of Suffering - Tome II EP (2018)
The 2010s were not a super busy period for Canada's Crytopsy, with just the decent s/t album in 2012 and this pair of Book of Suffering EPs which were self-releases that didn't stir up a ton of attention. With only four tracks to follow up Tome I's four, it didn't seem like the band was engaged in a lot of creativity. That's not to sell the material here short, because this EP possesses all the intensity and technicality you'd expect from one of the most brutal bands in the genre's history, and there are a few fresh ideas to round out the songwriting, but it's over in a flash, and so concussive that it can give you a headache or disappear amongst all the other output in this very style that has flooded a dozen or so labels these last two decades.
The band still leans heavily on Flo Mounier's almost inhuman, mechanical drumming, but Christian Donaldson's guitars are also a highlight, leveling out a myriad of riffs all over the fretboard, some more clinical and melodic ("Sire of Sin"), others just sort of driving along in rapid succession to the grooves and blasts, but either way you'll certainly be listening through the tracks numerous times to catch onto everything. Olivier Pinard's bass is also intimidating, as dizzying as the guitars, but also laying out some fat plunking moments like the breaks in "The Wretched Living" or just lines that feel appropriately complex if we were to isolate them from the rest of the mayhem. As for Matt's vocals, I still find them incredibly generic, he doesn't have the character of some of his predecessors, and all the gutturals and snarls do feel interchangeable with countless other acts in the genre. That said, he's not lacking in the actual energy and percussive nature of his delivery, and over the year he has certainly fit into the formula so that he's nowhere near a detriment.
Like a lot of technical/brutal death, there's a modular sense of construction which seems like pieces could be swapped between songs and nobody would know better, meaning it's quite consistent in execution but also a bit indistinct. They definitely try a little innovation, like the choppy little extreme Voivod bit in "Fear His Displeasure" or numerous other progressive sequences, but the nature of how harried and busy they write doesn't let you linger on any of the catchier, striking moments, instead barreling headfirst into another blasting clusterfuck. It's all very precise, don't get me wrong, it's not sloppy by any means, but they are in such a rush to dazzle that I just can't get too absorbed into anything. It's the nature of the sub-genre, perhaps, but I actually think Crytopsy would be stronger if they focused in on the more adventurous material, and just gave us the blasting when it really counted or when they could support it with a better quality riff. Tome II is calamitous, crazy and I'd say both superior to its predecessor, worth a few spins, and loyal to the Cryptopsy trajectory at large, but it often falls prey to its own short attention span.
Verdict: Win [7/10]
https://linktr.ee/Cryptopsy
Monday, November 2, 2015
Cryptopsy - The Book of Suffering (Tome I) (2015)
And it is an all-out assault on the senses, once the rather self-celebratory intro sample cedes to "Detritus (The One They Kept)", a blasting neck-strainer interspersed with all manner of choppy grooves to ensure maximum moshing reaction, and zipping, zagging rhythm guitar lines that help distract the ear from what is otherwise a fairly half-baked selection of chord progressions. Matt McGachy's barks, grunts and deeper gutturals might forever evade the distinction of the invertebrate before him, but he plasters the tracks with an overbearing balance that anchors the far thinner and technical timbre of the rhythm guitar, and the almost effortless strength with which Flo Mounier shifts the gears on his drum kit, bouncing and blasting with little strain over every hill, around every rotary, and hurtling over every pit stop. Coupled with the farting, bustling bass-lines of Olivier Pinard, the undertow of The Book of Suffering would seem a hectic framework upon which to paste riffs, but Christian Donaldson finds a way, his note choices rarely all that interesting, but wild and frenetic enough to not disservice the legacy of intensity that got Cryptopsy this far to begin with.
The pacing is largely out of control, a cork popping off the bottle for much of the 17 minute play length, pausing for breath only for the brief opening guitar experimentation of "The Knife, The Head and What Remains" or the ambient winding-down of "Halothane Glow". Granted, the release as a whole is short, and catering to the expectations of a mixed tech death/metalcore crowd which always valued the band for its position on the edge of the handle, flying off at various intervals, so the lack of much variation could be forgiven. Yet, for some reason, the four tracks on this just did not resonate with me anyway. The dexterity and the suffocating precision of the performance failed to muster individual riffs or lyrical lines that had me reeling for more, and in its quest for such a technically flawless, pinpoint production it almost entirely lacks staying power. As an statement of purpose, I think The Book of Suffering is quite loyal to the s/t, and the band are meting out the style of material which can keep them relevant in a niche that desperately needs a new destination. This newer lineup can play your lights out, there is no question, but I don't know that the band still leads the pack, or that they've ever done so in the nearly two decades since None So Vile.
Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Monday, February 25, 2013
Cryptopsy - The Unspoken King (2008)
This, in of itself, this stylistic choice, does not bother me. The trending and timing is suspect, but a cursory listen through the previous material will reveal influences of metalcore, math metal, sludge, and just about any other 'hot topic' on the extreme music scene of the Western world. And let's be honest: a sizable portion of the band's audience consisted of hardcore and metalcore fans since the 90s, when they first got wind of a record like None So Vile or Whisper Supremacy (around the time of the Century Media signing) and got off on the raving guttural vocals and the technical lunacy of the performance. While purely anecdotal evidence, I, myself, living in one of the USA's most massive and trendsetting metalcore markets, heard a lot more about Cryptopsy from the 'core kids than the bedraggled death metal minority. So it makes a lot of sense that the band's audience would itself rub off on the band, as it always had, and create a feedback loop through the years. The problem is that prior works like Once Was Not took this into an experimental direction, where The Unspoken King is a brickwalled billboard for its cliches, a Bleeding Through with a higher level of technicality and musical endorsement, and less novice chord progressions and glaringly generic melodies.
The Unspoken King isn't a bad record because it forges a truce between Cryptopsy's spurious, furious history and deathcore's tattooed, stretch-lobed, emo-haired breakdowns. It's a bad record because the songwriting is uniformly soulless and uninteresting. To be certain, this is not an effort short on variation; I'd go so far to say that there's just as much diversity on this as Once Was Not, only playing by a separate set of rules. You've got your mechanical drumming-fueled brutal death metal undertone, climaxing into some of the most banal and boring chug breakdowns you've ever heard. Glints of post-hardcore and modern heavy radio rock are strewn through the more intense passages, and they definitely make every effort to showcase the 'sensitive side' of their new vocalist. If all of this were dowsed in superb riff-writing, atmosphere and really catchy vocal lines, then I'd be the first to forgive these cheap shots of accessibility, but unfortunately these ideas simply don't gel into anything worth remembering. In their attempt to escape the 'weirdness' of the previous, Lord Worm fronted album, they've gone too far to the other side, losing all distinction.
It doesn't help that two of the newer band members, whether by their own lack of talent or poor decisions on the part of the veterans, turn in such atrocious performances here. Vocalist Matt McGachy was pretty much a 'package deal' of mediocrity. He's not necessarily tuneless or incompetent at the contrasting styles and pitches he brings to the table, but each feels wholly mundane and uninteresting. Not as goofy as Mike DiSalvo on And Then You'll Beg, but no more charming either. He's got a pretty standard guttural bark, a deeper guttural for 'da sickness', a rasp that's more suited to the grind influenced grooves and rhythms, and the requisite clean parts for those 'radio hooks' redolent of NWOAHM bands like Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage, and All That Remains. Safe for mommy, or your little sister. While none of his harsher inflections is particularly effective, the melodic vocals are almost unbearable in the context of Cryptopsy; ranging from a Puddle of Mudd/Linkin Park inflection to a silkier attempt at pulling off some Mike Patton worship, which simply sounds out of place on this record. Probably the worst offender here is the song "Bound Dead", which transforms into vapid power chord strumming that carries his voice into very obvious 'we wanna be liked by people who would otherwise hate us' territory; but this is not the sole transgressor.
Even worse, the 'keyboardist' Maggie Durand. I'm not averse to Cryptopsy using synthesizers, as they made for an interesting orchestral excursion on the prior album, and I have no problem with synthesizers in general if they're adding atmosphere to the music. But these are utter shit throughout the whole record! It's very difficult to think of her as anything more than 'window dressing', as in the aforementioned shit act Bleeding Through. There's nothing wrong with a little eye candy, but for whatever reason she either really sucks at playing the keys, or the band is painfully underusing her here. At best she'll be delivering well below the volume of the other instruments, some single note atmospheric pad or sampled texture. Or the band will throw in a bit of a techno electronic substrate into a brief passage, but all of it is incredibly useless. The music would have lost nothing without it. If keys were not going to be made a prominent feature of the band, then I see no reason to even add a band member, and thus the pretty glaring evidence of 'sex appeal'. They can be used subtly to great effect (Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos), but here they are nearly 100% arbitrary. For all I know, Durand is a virtuoso on the piano, but Cryptopsy doesn't want me to find out...
Otherwise, who cares? Flo Mounier drums with the personality of one of those programmable vacuum robots that are all the rage with lazy housewives and househusbands. Sleek, professional, polished to a flaw. Yeah, maybe he sounds more level than on other records where his fills and performance had a lot more charisma, but this is no more or less than any modern brutal/tech record you'll find out there. I'm sure the bass playing is also keeping busy here, but it too feels like it's on a valium drip. Langlois' farting, popping presence on past records is here just another forgettable undertow to the machine-like composition. At the very best, Alex Auburn and Christian Donaldson will tear into some semi-decent death/thrash break for all too brief a time, or dial into the old school death metal that once inspired Cryptopsy in the 90s. For instance, my favorite moment on the entire record is the tremolo picked, evil sequence coming after the breakdown in "The Headsman" at around 3:20, where the airiness of the thin keys actually works, and the passionate lead capitalizes on the rhythm guitar, but they even go and fuck that up with the ensuing, boring nu-metal groove chords that make me wanna sprout dreadlocks and appear a Crow sequel soundtrack.
Pretty much the only aspects of The Unspoken King which don't disappoint are: a) the cover artwork by Jeik Dion, which is quite atmospheric and by that token has nothing whatsoever to do with the music; and b) the lead guitars, in general well composed and gleaming far above and beyond the vocals or rhythm sections. The lyrics are a mixed bag. Nowhere near as unhinged or compelling as the Lord Worm records, some are at least intelligent and meaningful (vague, personal or sociopolitical, and very 'deathcore'). But others are pretty shitty reads here, like "The Plagued", or "Bound Dead" which is so generic and emo that I had to slap myself a few times to realize I wasn't listening to Mutiny Within or All That Remains. Beyond that, The Unspoken King seems like quite a lot of effort expended into a product that I can't imagine anyone wanting. Did deathcore/metalcore fashionistas really want a brutal band of older Canadians jumping the bandwagon? I feel for certain that most death metal purists had no interest. There are a few moments in which the album reveals what it 'might have been' had the members' had their heads on straight, but really it's just a waste of everyone's time. Yours, mine, and the poor record store employees that had to expend an iota of effort unpacking and shelving the CD.
Verdict: Fail [2.5/10] (we are all confined, with nothing left to show)
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Friday, February 22, 2013
Cryptopsy - The Best of Us Bleed (2012)
So let's get the bullshit out the way first: most of the roughly 140 minutes of content here is simply lifted off the first six studio records and arranged in a reverse chronological order. Wisely, you get a few rare and unreleased studio tracks (which I'll get to) right at the beginning, and then this journey through time begins with abysmal selections from The Unspoken King and then backwards towards a brighter age. This reprinted content represents about 50% of the total play time, and is utterly worthless to the Crytopsy fan, assuming he/she isn't some 13-year old with no access to the internet. It's the 21st century, we can all shuffle our favorite band playlists in any order we desire on our portable devices and PCs, and we really don't need any sort of 'official best of...' from either a label dude or the band itself. That this was released digitally is just a fucking farce. Sure, they've got some of the real essentials like "Slit Your Guts" and "Emaciate" present from the band's catalog, but then you're also treated to six tracks from their crappy records And Then You'll Beg and The Unspoken King. It balances out, but not to the positive side of the scale.
The latter half of the second disc becomes more interesting as it covers live material and rehearsals, but again, most of this was already released. There are selections from the None So Live album, and also a bunch of bonus tracks that were included on Japanese releases of their albums. The four rehearsal cuts were all demoed for Whisper Supremacy, but we're not talking shitty quality recordings. If you didn't appreciate how that record hit you like a ton of bricks, then you might prefer the drumming dynamics and the lesser polished balance of vocals and guitars, but really these reek of filler and their placement seems like an obvious 'padding out' of the content. If Cryptopsy had thought you should hear these versions, then it's likely you already would have. Not much of a bonus in my estimation. Another rare bit here is the band's cover of Strapping Young Lad's "Oh My Fucking God", repressed from the Covering 20 Years of Extremes collection Century Media had released. I never picked up a copy, so this was my first time hearing it, but it's really no more than a slightly more brutal rendition of the song, in which the vocals are barely even different than Devin's originals, but you get more intense blasting, squealing, and so forth.
And now for the good stuff! The Best of Us Bleed opens with three wrecking ball tracks performed at the same level of intensity as their 2012 'comeback' album, which isn't really a comeback so much as the band returning to its former level of brutality and abandoning the treacherous wigga deathcore direction it had adopted for The Unspoken King. It's a safe bet that anyone to whom the eponymous record appealed will also really enjoy these frenetic and furious pieces. "Boden" was the least impressive, just an over the top series of double bass batteries and Matt going about as brutal as he can with the gutturals and gurgles. The middle of the tune does get more interesting with some winding groove guitars over a blast. "A Graceful Demise", on the other hand, is probably one of the band's best tunes since None So Vile. Atmospheric, evil transitions, loads of clinical tremolo picking rhythms, jumpy and rapid grooves, and an incessant Flo Mounier hurricane with copious snare, blast and kick. "Holodomor" is pretty good too, peppered with jerky and peppy instrumental maneuvers in line with its two sibling cuts.
Granted, the production will be a bit too sleek for some who are missing the first two albums, and Matt McGachy's presence, while appropriately punishing, still feels more generic than his precursor Lord Worm, but these are the sorts of tracks that would have made for a solid EP. Hell, they're good enough to have wound up on the s/t album, so it would have saved some people some cash if they hadn't been stored up for The Best of Us Bleed. Then again, these are pretty much the only reason anyone in his/her right mind could justify a purchase of the compilation. I can't help but think that Cryptopsy has a lot of other unreleased material that they might have held back here, which would have increased the value dramatically. Like I know the Ungentle Exhumation demo was already reissued on CD, but many probably still don't have it. That and a half dozen other obscurities would have been an ample substitute for the album tracks. But hey, wishful thinking and all. As your doctor, I'd advise YouTubing the three unheard studio tracks, or stealing them from a friend, and then listening to None So Vile again.
Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Cryptopsy - None So Live (2003)
The older material, that, thankfully populates most of this Montreal live recording from the summer of 2002. Of the ten tracks (discounting the audience noise intro and drum solo), eight are taken from the first three albums, with only two stinkers ("Shroud" and "We Bleed") from And Then You'll Beg; so it's clear that Cryptopsy knew what the audience wanted, and that was primarily their seminal brutality. I've only seen the band a few times back in the day (though never with Lacroix), and can attest that this is a fairly accurate representation of their tone on stage, though there's no question some of the intricacies of the technical guitar progressions get lost in translation as they do with many similar death metal acts. The rhythm guitar is rich and punchy enough that it doesn't get shown up by the drums, and yet if anyone had any skepticism of Flo Mounier's abilities, they are splayed out here like a single-man marching band. The snares sound like heavy hail battering down on the roof of some tin shed, while the kicks drop dextrous thunder with superb timing. Langlois' bass lines are deep and muddy here, not popping or squelching with the same authority that they do on the studio records, but ample enough when there are breaks (as in "Slit Your Guts").
As for Lacroix, he doesn't quite imbue the tracks with as much character as his predecessors, but he does have a nice, hoarse bluntness to his tone which is a good fit for the hammering, percussive rhythms. It might have been interesting to hear what he could have pulled off in studio, but he's hardly distinguishable from a number of other potential options the Canadians might have run with. The leads here sound a bit sloppy, and the remaining rhythm guitar gets a bit more difficult to perceive in these sections, but it's probably to be expected if the mixer wasn't going to turn them up. Accurate to the live setting. I was actually somewhat relieved that the two And Then You'll Bet tracks sounded far heavier and more appropriate on stage to their earlier neighbors, largely because the vocals are less goofy and the drums and bass sound thicker with the rhythm guitar, but "Shroud" at least still sounds pretty dorky in a bad way. That was a phase of the band I am all too happy to forget (apart from joking), so I wasn't thrilled that they were partnered up with far better cuts. Overall track selection? I would have loved if a few other tracks like "Emaciate" made it onto this, but it could have been far worse...
I was worried that the drum solo would be too long, but it's really only about 3 and a half minutes of Flo showing off (hey, if you got it, flaunt it), and then they leap into another track. The mix of the crowd is decent, constantly present but not overpowering, and easily drowned up when the band is blasting and churning full bore. All in all, it's a decent accounting of the band's performance prowess, but far from a mandatory purchase unless you're completely smitten with the idea of owning everything they produce. The sound is decent if a bit lopsided towards the lower end, and the track selection is not ideal, even if it offers up a comprehensive taste of the four studio albums to its day. I wasn't inspired by None So Live, but neither was I really turned off.
Verdict: Indifference [6/10]
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Cryptopsy - Once Was Not (2005)
Although Jon Levasseur contributed to the rather forgettable intro "Luminum", this was the one album in their catalog where it just wasn't his show. So the most overt mutation here is the boxier, drier guitar tone. Less saturated than prior albums, but it has a lot of rip and zip to it when Alex Auburn is flying up and down the frets.When compiled into a trudging, jarring or mechanically dissonant groove, the rhythm patterns often felt reminiscent of (proper) metalcore acts like Burnt by the Sun or Coalesce (like the chugging breakdown in "The Frantic Pace of Dying") which was something new to the Canadians, especially as its paired up with a lot of more traditional death metal riffing. Granted, a lot of the guitar progressions, especially in earlier cuts like "Carrionshine" or "In the Kingdom Where Everything Dies, the Sky is Mortal", are total dullards, regardless of how unhinged, dynamically varied, or slamming they become. The oddity of the songwriting doesn't necessarily work out in their favor, especially compared to something like Obscura which is so much more adept at 'getting it right'. As you move further into the track list, with cuts like "The Curse of the Great" or "The Pestilence That Walketh in Darkness (Psalm 91 - 5-8)", you start to hear more of that classic Crytopsy death propulsion arrive into the riffing selections, and it becomes far more interesting and effective, while retaining this arid production.
Arguably, "The Pestilence..." is the real standout on this album, because the airier sludge/Neurosis chord melodies really take you by surprise, especially with Worm barking his schizoid narrations. Speaking of whom, he was back in full ghastly splendor, weaving his interesting lyrics with the usual poetic license. His grueling barks and growls were still nothing incredibly interesting, but it's a landslide victory over DiSalvo on the fourth record, and his ability to pen titles and lyrics that immediately catch the imagination (more than the music) was very much missing from both Whisper Supremacy and its followup. I wish more bands would take such risks in this department, or just have Lord Worm write for them, because it's compelling to the degree that were I to rate this record on the prose alone, it would receive a far higher score. Yet, sadly, Cryptopsy would go down an entirely opposite route with the next album, investing in a more metalcore slash hardcore/personal sensibility which was rather a bummer. That said, I must admit that apart from his garish attempts to spew vomit and lumbricus terrestris all over the songs, his vocals were average.
Along with the guitar tone, the drums and bass here also took on a different tone than the earlier discs. Éric Langlois' playing remained dizzying and acrobatic, with lots of slappy and pluggy sounding rhythms, but it was a bit deeper in pitch and occasionally got lost under the rhythm/lead sequences, a shame because he's often performing something more interesting than that rhythm guitar. Mounier, who has long been the chief selling point for this band, is incorporated at monstrous levels of volume, his beats constantly crashing and colliding throughout the death, grind and -core progressions. His presence is always furious to the point of confusion, but this record is simply loaded with fills. In fact I often felt as if this was a batch of Flo Mounier drum solo recordings over which the rest of the band filled in riffs and lyrics. Sometimes, it's just a little too much, and while 'more' is the man's bread and butter, it's not necessarily 'better'. The leads, too, are a bit tactless and showy, Auburn tearing all over his strings with patterns that remind me at times of Pestilence and Nocturnus in their heydays, classical-fusion-infused; just not always catchy in the context of this music.
This is pretty goddamn experimental, all told. Tribal drums, funkier cleaner guitars, slight black metal textures in some of the more explosive riffing. Fuck, they've even got an exotic, hippie-like drum circle instrumental called "The End", all that's missing is a Ravi Shankar guest spot... For the first time, Cryptopsy are even incorporating orchestration, in the track "Angelskingarden" (what a title) with its sweeping, atmospheric synth intro and the choir tones coming in under the lead. No surprise, this is another of the gems inhabiting the later moments of the record. "Endless Cemetery" and "Keeping the Cadaver Dogs Busy" are also packed with ideas, if not the most memorable selections. One really has to wonder why the decision was made to open up with the least impressive material. It really sapped my interest level, but it does give Once Was Not the impression of a flower that slowly unfolds to keep hooking the listener along. Had the actual catchiness of the rhythm guitars remained constant, and the grooves less sodden and vapid, this might have been spectacular, even with its loud and lumbering production values. This is twice the record And Then You'll Beg was, but as it stands, Once Was Not is a collection of ideas not fully fleshed out. Fruits not borne to fruition.
Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10] (once, there were boundaries)
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Cryptopsy - And Then You'll Beg (2000)
I don't get the cover. Is this guy supposed to be 'begging' for someone to free him from the train tracks? Is he maybe a ghost, who has already been hit by a locomotive? I could never tell if that dust and wind was from the train racing away from him, or towards!? Granted, I have never much cared for Cryptopy's choice of artwork beyond the first two albums, but this is arguably the nadir (the recent s/t record also sucks to look upon). Unfortunately, though the band attempts to pump us up immediately with a pitch-shifted sample of Agent Smith in The Matrix, the only thing 'inevitable' about the music was that the band was taking a long walk off a short pier. It's almost as if they were trying to flirt with some thuggish approximation of brutal death metal while simultaneously trying to outdistance the dissonant, unusual theatrics of Gorgut's oblong epic Obscura. It's extremely technical, and extremely bouncy at the same time. There are a number of plausible riffs throughout the performance, and certainly no dearth of ideas, but let me be blunt: if you had put another logo on this record and then told me it was a collaboration between Psyopus, Hatebreed and the Insane Clown Posse...I just might have believed you.
Though I questioned and even defied the ire hoisted upon Mike DiSalvo for his performance on Whisper Supremacy, there is absolutely no defense for the guy here. His voice is being used at higher speeds, with a more grumbling, percussive meter, and he's even attempting to draw back a bit of Lord Worm's clownish, psychotic personality. But he sounds like a caveman being temporally displaced to front a spazz-core math metal project, and when he swears, like his infamous 'motherfucker take a bite of the poison' in "Voice of Unreason", I would fall out of my chair and laugh myself to hiccups, entirely incapable of taking the rest of the album seriously. The drums are probably just as busy as on the prior records, but they seem a bit thinner in the mix to the point that they leave a lot less impact on the skull. The bass lines are slappy, thick and funky, falling somewhere between Steve DiGiorgio and Korn, and while I actually kind of dug the technique on the older albums where the riffing was better, here it just sounds like another ring of the circus act.
Probably the worst of the instruments, though, are the guitars, which are weighed down by all manner of schizophrenic pacing and experimentation that almost unanimously fails to connect the listener to the album in any meaningful way. Shit be crazy, yo. We be pushin' the envelope! Dissonant, chugging sequences grope and bounce along into sporadic, frenetic bursts of repetitive insanity like "My Prodigal Sun" or "Shroud", but the actual patterns of notes just feel like half-formed ideas that they thought would be cool to put on tape and then loop around. At the very best, you're going to get some bristling tremolo picked bursts like "We Bleed" which actually seem more redolent of the old Cryptopsy that I enjoyed, but then even that track is ruined by the groove rhythm with DiSalvo's hoarse, jump da fuc up syllabic beatdown/breakdown accompanied by a faint, cheesy rasped counter vocal. Or how about the didgeridoo intro to closer "Screams Go Unheard"? An interesting idea they totally fail to capitalize on with a selection of shitty, spastic, broken deathgrind riffs.
It stuns me that people were so appalled at the later release of The Unspoken King, the band's 'deathcore' record, because for my money, And Then You'll Beg had already proven just how inconsistent and insipid the Canadians' choices could be. While Whisper Supremacy had its flaws, the band was at least standing upon the precipice of something larger...yet its corny, oddball successor seems like a misstep of monolithic, George Lucas proportions. Actually, I'll take that back, because I'd rather sit through another showing of the Jake Lloyd pod race than listen to this. Jar Jar poop jokes = a more fitting comparison. The elasticity of the instrumentation, while perhaps technically impressive to some, is just no substitute for songwriting, and I was rarely interested outside of, maybe the intro to the bizarre "Soar and Envision Sore Vision". As cathartic and confusing as it might have been, an album like Obscura is strikingly cohesive in its vision; whereas And Then You'll Beg is just young, dumb, and full of cum. A simian sideshow, a cacophony of clever monkeys, beating energetically on human instruments, but incapable of creating good music with them.
Verdict: Fail [3.75/10] (trippin' at the helm)
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Cryptopsy - Whisper Supremacy (1998)
Don't get me wrong, I loved Lord Worm's lyrics, and thus was quite concerned that the quality might suffer with his departure (he still contributes to the tracks "White Worms" and "Cold Hate, Warm Blood"), but in terms of vocals I was never as sold on his style as many of my peers. He was whacky, wild, and amusingly sick on stage, but it's not like the first few albums would have been necessarily awful with someone else grunting and ranting over the music, and as I'd mentioned in an earlier review, he didn't have that same gruesome and unforgettable presence for me as many of the first generational death metal front men. DiSalvo was marginally different, but not to the point that he'd be incapable of covering those earlier None So Vile tracks. He's got a bit more of a 'street' aesthetic to his gutturals; nihilistic, hardcore and concrete, but still capable of diversifying his pitch with some ghastlier rasps, and owning up to the chaotic brickwork that Cryptopsy had evolved into musically. DiSalvo is not himself particularly memorable, and I do feel as if he failed to stand out among the hordes of guttural grunters in the field by the later 90s, but really that's the worst I could say about his performance on Whisper Supremacy. It's an album with some clear flaws, but he was not one of them.
No, alongside this transition in vocalists and label visibility, and the addition of another 2nd guitarist in studio (Miguel Roy, who had already been with them for a few years), the Canadians also began to develop their style into a broader palette of extreme metal aesthetics. Already renowned for their intensity and instrumental prowess, they began to fuck more with tempos. A lot of the denser, churning chord progressions placed through Whisper Supremacy brings to mind a solid foundation of battering ram grind. The contrasts between melodies and sheer, brutal annihilation create an increased sense of technicality. There are actually a number of riffs on this thing which mirror the most intense of the Swedish melodeath forebears (At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, etc) like the rhythm guitars under the lead bridge in "Cold Hate, Warm Blood" or the tremolo picking pattern that sets up "Faceless Unknown". Cryptopsy were not new to the concept of breakdowns, but a few here have that generic chugging pit vibe that would go on to fuel the careers of countless future deathcore acts. Add these elements into the band's pre-existing pedigree of carnal blast beats, gut wrenching old school tremolo sequences, harried bass lines and over the top aggression and you've got quite a lot happening through the 31 minutes of the album...perhaps too much.
Some of Flo's beats here were reminiscent of cadences, and clearly the guy was continuing to expand and define is own capabilities with a barrage that must have had most drummers in waiting quite afraid for their own prospects. I noticed that the guitars had been cranked up a notch in the mix even beyond where they were on None So Vile, a double edged sword. They somewhat smother the bass lines, though not enough that you can't make out Langlois' racing across his fretboard; but at the same time, they're way more up in your face, for better or worse. When the riffs are great, as on the first track "Emaciate", it's an appreciable change. But a lot of the grindier, beefier progressions deeper into the disc are simply not all that impressive. Leads in tunes like "Faceless Unknown" are quite excellent, just as good as any on the sophomore, but I definitely feel like there are a lot of rhythm guitars which miss the mark entirely, thriving on their extremity alone. Lacking menace and atmosphere. Nothing special to write home about. Not that I'd send Cryptopsy based correspondence to my family, for they'd be liable to have me locked away somewhere.
And these guitars are a symptom of why Whisper Supremacy ultimately failed to impress me on the same level as its predecessor: there are too many ideas cramped into its concise bulk, and very few of them earn their keep. Beyond the obvious 'look at me, and how intense I play' nature of this end of the death metal genre, it's quite telling that the more concerted, melodic touches through the album feel like glimmers of hope among a very spiritless host of thundering drums and disinterested guitars. I never caught the sense of evil or foreboding that the band's wyvern-like mascot implied on the album cover, and several of the cuts, like the closer "Serpent's Coil" are a stupendous, dissonant, bore regardless of how rampant and hard hitting they seem. I dug the flow of the first two tracks, "Emaciate" and "Cold Hate, Warm Blood", in particular how the first cedes to the unexpected acoustic guitars threaded through the second. "White Worms" and "Faceless Unknown" certainly have their moments, but others like "Loathe" and "Flame to the Surface" had little to offer beyond a bludgeoning calamity.
Back to the lyrics: they're still pretty good, but they lack that psychotic, poetic stalker aesthetic which I so admired on None So Vile and Blasphemy Made Flesh. Plenty of imagery, intelligence and introspection here, but at the same time they seem somewhat more methodic and formulaic. The cover artwork is also not on par with its predecessors, though I'd take this any day over the shitty image on the 4th album. Things were pretty busy for Cryptopsy by this point, and though it was a few years past None So Vile, I always had the impression that this was a bit rushed, which might explain some of the cluttered writing. Transitions often feel forced into one another, and generally the dizzying bedlam of the performances outpaces their actual, musical resonance in the mind. A lot of the album's problems are emblematic of what plagues a lot of brutal/technical death work: a real lack of direction and compositional quality. Were I some robotic shell of a person, I might admire its drumming and brutish density more, contrary to popular belief, I still retain a pulse. A decent album, with a handful of really interesting songs, but ultimately less effective than its predecessor, and it doesn't age very well.
Verdict: Win [7/10] (your sins must escalate)
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Cryptopsy - None So Vile (1996)
What's more: None So Vile accomplishes all of these goals without aesthetically altering itself from the first album, a miracle in of itself. This is more or less what I expected after reading the buzz over Cryptopsy in the mid 90s, but it's not a whole lot different in terms of method. There were some shifts in the band's lineup, with Éric Langlois joining on bass, and dropping down to just one guitarist (Jon Levasseur), but in truth the band recycled a lot of its signature traits off the debut. Squamous and voluminous bass-lines constantly giving the rhythm guitars a run for their money (to an extent I really hadn't experienced since a band like Sadus induced the rebellion into thrash metal), but simultaneously adding a substrate of marginal jazz and funk that kept the writing fresh. Multidimensional. A killer, up front drum mix which sounds to this day incredibly authentic in a field where brickwalled production, triggers and detrimental levels of tidiness often create more sterility than a band set out to; in listening through Mounier's performance on the sophomore, I feel as if I'm sitting in some studio space right at the level of his kicks and experience a set of amazingly energetic takes which never fall off tempo. What a spazz! Lord Worm also started to distinguish himself better here, with a hoarser, impenetrable guttural inflection redolent of a sepulcher wall, creating an amusing contrast against the frivolous insanity of the bass and rhythm guitar.
But all of these elements might have easily been projected from the first album. The foremost reasons for this record's success over its predecessor are the dramatic improvement in guitar tone and note progressions. I still feel as if the rhythm tracks often struggle a fraction to keep up with the drums and bass, but they've got a more punchy sense of pacing and clarity that helps them pummel through the mix, especially in the razor-like tremolo sequences which solidify Cryptopsy's lineage to the old school ancestry. Death metal was already about a decade into its existence by 1996, but one had the sense that the Canadians were not entirely ready to abandon the roots to all of the four on the floor, chug-chug-blast-blast alternation that was all the rage as the margins of the genre pushed further into unmatched excess. And that's a huge difference between this and the first album: here, those vitriolic tremolo picking patterns in tunes like "Dead and Dripping" or "Slit Your Guts" are instantly memorable, with an appropriate surgical feel to them that helps aggregate the sporadic blasting passages and churning, gut-fed grooves that place None So Vile into its then-modern context. The leads, too, are wilder and more spontaneous, Levasseur just whipping his dick out to the wind, taking a piss, and having it land on the listener rather than splash back upon himself.
Most people will always evoke the names of Lord Worm or Flo Mounier when waxing nostalgic about this band, but for my money, Jon was the MVP this time out. His playing was frenzied, frenetic, pretty much the perfect pit stop between where death metal had been, and where it was going. That doesn't always manifest into the most striking or infinite re-listenable rhythmic fixtures, and you get a handful of pretty dull grooves wound through the more explosive, interesting composition, but thanks to the overall compactness of None So Vile at 32 minutes, instances of not being entertained are pitifully few. I might not define the album as necessarily 'original', but there were certainly a number of strange bridges with dumpy bass grooves and cleaner, weird guitars that it almost seemed to offer brief premonitions for Gorguts' Obscura, another of my favorites from this scene. Interestingly enough, despite the rabidness of the farting, squelching and burping bass lines, the pure moshing zones, the pinched squeals and other techniques, None So Vile is not an expressly dissonant or inaccessible album. It rips past faster than a pair of collegiate panties at the sound of a Eurotrash accent, and it's bludgeoning nature isn't exactly safe for church, but the clinical melodies infused into the tremolo picking are actually quite easy to follow unto the inevitable, spleen rupturing grooves.
Gotta love the nuances here, like the piano playing that heralds "Phobophile", or the subtle overtures you'll heard in the riffing that tie the band back to its influences. In particular, I heard some Carcass-like chord fixtures, even hints of other British brutes like Napalm Death or Bolt Thrower. Again, the Canadians were not above the inspirations that birthed them; they were building a bridge between these two extremes of expression: the later 80s/early 90s morbidity and the sporty performance and proficiency which had later supplanted it. You can even see that in the wonderful 17th century, Elisabetta Sirani cover image, a clash of the archaic with the band's sick and unforgettable logo. The lyrics were just as demented and interesting as the debut, with Lord Worm assuming a number of 'voices' or characters to create this sense of psychosis that just won't quit. Fuck, "Slit Your Guts" and "Dead and Dripping" have some of the best lyrics in the entire genre...not just silly misogynistic gore, and I'll take these any day over a Cannibal Corpse or Mortician. This sense of ambition permeates the entire album, and even at its most derivative it seems to at least be aimed in the right direction.
Smashing. Fucking. Record. I mean, it's not perfect, and I probably wouldn't take it to my desert island over Consuming Impulse, Altars of Madness, Nespithe, or Left Hand Path, but certainly for the mid to late 90s this belonged in the outstanding company of Morbid Angel's underrated Domination, Cannibal Corpse's magnum-mutilation Bloodthirst, the aforementioned Obscura, or Vader's consistently strong showings. Hands down the best record of its type for '96, and to this day Cryptopsy have not surpassed it. In fact, they've not even produced anything in the same ballpark. Whisper Supremacy, while a slightly more inventive album in terms of riffing structure, could not come close. It at any point the Canadians were well deserving of the hype they've never shaken in nearly two decades, it was this album, and its jubilant wretchedness holds true even to modern times, where a couple thousand creative spinoffs constantly unravel its blueprint on the draft table and scrawl out visceral Cliff's notes in their own blood.
Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (the righteous will be lost)
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Cryptopsy - Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994)
There were some clear positives when I was first exposed to the band and this record, aesthetic details that no doubt played a large part in their early, infectious spread through the underground. The band's name and logo were fantastic, and the original cover artwork an instant thrill for fans of records like Sepultura's Arise or Obituary's Cause of Death. Cryptopsy were one of the few North American acts licensed to Germany's Black Diamond/Invasion Records, and also one of the heavier acts on that imprint alongside Excrement, Vomiturition, Infestdead, Vomiting Corpses and Lunatic Invasion. Despite the sickness and violent themes involved, the lyrics had a peculiar, personal and poetic sense of playfulness about them, almost like Dan Greening (Lord Worm) was implementing his English studies into a sadistic sideshow attraction. They were immediately unique by comparison to so many of the gore-driven, misogynist fiends starting to cycle into redundancy, who had taken over the more extreme end of the genre; a manic food for thought that showed some obvious effort. In fact, the lyrics of Blasphemy Made Flesh are hands down my favorite part of the album, and I only wish that the songwriting itself had been so compulsory and unusual. Granted, there are a few pretty unique facets to the playing of the other musicians which stood out, in particular the rhythm section of Flo Mouriner and Martin Fergusson, but they're not able to fully compensate for the rather banal selection of rhythm guitar progressions which flew into one ear and straight out the opposite, without colliding in the center to turn the brain to mush.
Blasphemy Made Flesh belonged to that category of 90s death metal efforts which was seeking to push the parameters of its parent genre without necessarily abandoning the inviolable core of the medium. There are a number of 2nd generation tremolo picked riffs here and standard growls which pay credence to the Floridian and Dutch forefathers of the style, and fellow Canadians Gorguts, who had the jump on Cryptopsy by only a few years and would share a large crossover audience. But the emphasis here was to force the speed limit and cluttered intensity of the composition, and less to create resonant, memorable riffs. Where albums like Severed Survival, Consuming Impulse, Left Hand Path, Cause of Death and even to an extent Effigy of the Forgotten had paved the way with foul, mesmeric aberrations of thrash-based techniques, this basically borrowed and rearranged familiar note sequences and then dialed up the volume and elasticity of the drums and bass, which combined with Worm's garbled ranting seemed like a night at a circus with an audience of severed heads. There's a fuck ton happening throughout the 40 minutes of music, but apart from the speed and lyrical ravings, precious little information is retainable, and even if the guitars were configured into more exciting and catchy progressions, they seem a bit too searing, muddled and distant to really matter on a cut like "Abigor" or "Defenestration".
I could see how Mounier's dextrous striking was intimidating for its day; not as far a leap in the belligerence and technique of percussion as a Lombardo or Hoglan from the previous decade, but so fast and involved that it often feels like the sticks are about to escape Flo's hands and start playing themselves. Blasting, fills, and piledriver double bass crashing everywhere against the guitars. What's more, unlike a lot of the bands that later sucked off Cryptopsy's fumes but with a more programmed, polished studio sterility, this sounded quite live and straight to the chin, sans an excess of studio finesse. You could be hearing this straight from the band's jam space, or on stage. The bass lines are incredibly bouncy and copious, almost funky, to the point that where Martin Fergusson hits a higher chord it sounds like some sort of rambling, farting device that adds an air of unintentional hilarity to the proceedings. The guy was a fucking maniac, and even though most would come to identify the position with his successor, Éric Langlois, who has to date performed on most of their records, I can only wonder at what he might have created had he followed a more prolific career in the genre...
On the flip side, the performances of this pair do contribute to the smothering of the rhythm guitar tracks of Jon Levasseur and Steve Thibault, which weren't all that interesting to begin with. Lots of meaty palm muted chugging and fits of basis tremolo picked, surgical precision are alternated in a relish of deep distortion that often disintegrates into background noise for the acrobatics of the other players. Nothing we really hadn't already heard from a band like Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse, and while the songs aren't really lacking for variation, the percussive shifts in tempo are more exciting than the actual notes slung together. As further proof, just listen to how much the leads and melodies stand out where they appear, like the thrashing bridge and eerie pattern at around 3:00 in "Abigor", or the shredding in "Serial Messiah" and "Born Headless". Really, these are the only instances of a tangible 'atmosphere' on the album (apart from an intro like on "Serial Messiah"), and when they strike amidst the blunt, taut, and tiring blandness of the rhythm guitars, I just wish everything else was better written. The playing is all around fast as fuck and slightly technical for the time, but really I'd have just as much luck sitting by the side of the highway and watching traffic pass. After nearly two decades with the album, I've been unable to change my mind on this. Some of the blast beat rhythm guitars as in the closer "Pathological Frolic" are just downright boring.
As for Worm, he grunts and growls with enough gusto that you don't feel the sense of monotony creep in which brought low a number of other mid-90s death metal front men. His techniques aren't exactly unique, but his alternation of the lower pitched, primal troglodyte gutturals and a lot of snarling strangled cat phrases which shift the pitch (but aren't layered over one another constantly like Glen Benton). Not as schizo and attention earning as the lyrics themselves, but neither are they the low point of this recording by a long shot. I'm aware that the guy was known for his crazy stage presence, but this doesn't entirely translate onto the recording itself. He was good at writing, and competent at keeping the listener awake, but it's hardly like the first time I heard John Tardy, Chris Reifert, Martin van Drunen or Craig Pillard where I peed myself and hid in my closet until all the bad monsters would go away. I'm not about to play the 'overrated' card, since the guy still brought something individual to the genre, and was their best front man; but all the same, I was never butthurt when he and the band parted ways (at least the first time between None So Vile and Whisper Supremacy).
Blasphemy Made Flesh isn't shit, and its flaws might be forgiven if I was to blindly adulate every single death metal record released between 1991-1995 (like some folks I've encountered). A decent headbanger with a faint few glimmers of creativity, which places the listener back in its age of conception, but ultimately it amounts to little more than a warmup for its successor. Just another instance where I wish an album was as menacing as it looked. Or as it intended. That I found this disc one of the blueprints for a lot of 'meh' brutal death metal bands to come, or a middling warmup for its successor (a record which actually does deserve its place on the pedestal of punishment), doesn't help its case, but like any other musical medium, I want death metal I can remember. That I can rampage to. Stab to. Cackle maniacally to. Be afraid of. The Cryptopsy debut does not provide that for me; it's more like a steamroller of insipid horror sequels rather than one frightening classic with scenes that I can never escape.
Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (to give the gift of murder)
http://cryptopsy.ca/
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Cryptopsy - Cryptopsy (2012)
So now we've got the presumed 180 degree turn back to the group's ubiquitous brutality, which has rubbed off on more bands that you could shake a gore-drizzled spine at. That bold, eponymous, mid-career defining album we've experienced so many times before, which will set out to right all the wrongs. Directly from the start, this doesn't look good. I mean that literally. Cryptopsy LOOKs like shit, its cover a pastiche of the band's bat-like icon over some generic emblem which you'd expect to find tattooed on some hardcore fan, or an Ed Hardy shirt design. Yeah, they've got the original logo seated at the base of the design, but why? It's a great one, and like the earlier albums, it should be a feature, not a visual footnote. It's almost as if the band was trying to bridge both its long-time, old school audience with the indifferent 'core audience The Unspoken King had reached out towards, and frankly it's a bummer. Fortunate, then, that as soon as the windy ambiance which inaugurates "Two-Pound Torch" parts, the Canadians roll us over like a calamitous cavalry charge borne out of the motherfucking Inferno.
Harried blasting, double bass rolls faster than you'd drop your trousers at a medical exam with Megan Fox, brute grunts that at last imply Matt McGachy is the right man for the job, chugging, squealing, and spurious, acrobatic guitar patterns that zip and zag across the brutal landfill of rhythmic concussion: I'd say Cryptopsy has awoken from any and all perceived delusions of its direction. And yet, there are certainly spikes of melodic death metal screaming through the maddening mesh that hint the band haven't yet abandoned the notion of feeling out parallel sub-genres. Dense, post-death grooves permeate the accelerated bursts and old school tremolo riffs throughout the album, and there's a jarring precision to the band's alternating tempos which shows a lot of elbow grease went into the album's composition. The bass pops along with such a fervor that it often impersonates some brutal funk. There are points at which Flo Mounier's battery is so lockstep conjugal with the patterns of Christian Donaldson and (the returning) Jon Levasseur that the sheer force of their combined delivery feels like a hundred Lilliputian hammers cracking my cranium simultaneously.
Tracks like "Amputated Enigma" and "Damned Draft Dodgers" trade off impious mechanical grooves with unbridled, cathartic velocity, while others like "Red-Skinned Scapegoat" embellish the carnage with radioactive leads and atmospheres. Plenty of pummeling variation throughout its compact, 31 minute run time, and while some might still accuse this or that riff of sounding 'deathcore', who really gives a shit? The subcultural streams are so crossed these days that they're all bleeding into one another, but for what it's worth, few of the grooves felt cheap, predictable or pedestrian (except maybe the close of "Ominous"). Most were intense and well managed against the extreme gees of the band's typical celerity, and fit like a glove to the record's huge, polished and punishing production. It's a modern tech-death explosion, with a contemporary gloss to its mix, but you can hear everything equally and that's all I can really ask for.
All those compliments aside, I can't confide to having loved the album. It's engaging, pissed off, and its hyperactivity is certainly conducive to a neck-strain, but few of the songs or riff patterns are distinct or memorable for more than a short time. As an exercise in sheer hostility, its right up there alongside most of the band's Cryptopsy has inspired over the past 15 years. You'll rarely wish to sit still here, so intense are the performances of the musicians and mechanistic their sadism, but despite this a lot of the rhythm guitar patterns and fluttering arpeggios do feel like a mere run through the motions of the niche they helped birth. I doubt I'll think back on this in six months' time. For now, it's fast. Fun. Furious. A partial update to None So Vile, if not an upgrade. Apology accepted.
Verdict: Win [7.25/10]
http://cryptopsy.ca/
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