SalamiDickDeath The Unspoken King is EASILY Cryptopsy's best album.

I came into the Cryptopsy fold with "Once Was Not" and was absolutely blown away. It's a maddening display of Cryptopsy's idiosyncratic Death Metal ways. I adore each and every Cryptopsy album. "The Unspoken King" simply has the most to offer. Other than Jon Levasseur's solos it has everything and more that the other albums have. Clean vocals, more groove and like 37 seconds of keyboards.

I am firm believer that when a band moves in one direction or another this is how you grow and keep things interesting. Making the same album 5 times is incredibly boring. To me this is a pretty decent jump in the forward moving progression of their sound though not wildly so (its not like they are rapping or playing ballads). For the life of me I cannot figure out who in gods name could consider this Deathcore. One of the very few genres I really can't get into at very least for the steroidal vocals and the simpleton breakdowns accompanied by a computer assisted bass drop in practically every goddamn song. Absolutely none of which is found on this pulverizing album.

Its more raging Death Metal at insane speeds with the best vocalist yet. Inhuman alternate picking, palm muting, tremolo picking, blastbeating, insane shred solos with sweeps and all the other Death Metal hallmarks. Plus the wickedly audible bass Cryptopsy has always lead the way with.

"Worship Your Demons" opens the album with a wildly aggressive blast beat that leads to a classic Cryptopsy style riff where guitar and bass are equally heard. The whole song screams Cryptopsy with the lead guitar shining by way of sweeps and tapping. Then "The Headsmen" comes in swinging hard with straight Cryptopsian attitude and simply tortured vocals. Ending with one of the shortest but coolest solo's since "None So Vile". After some cool Punk style riffing in "Anoint The Dead" it also lays waste to the fretboard with a solo of the highest order. "Leach" too opens with a Punk style riff followed by some classic speedy ass tremolo riffing.

Yes there is a sorta spoken word deal going on in "The Headsmen" and in the background of "Bemoan The Martyr", not at all far removed from "Pestilence That Walketh In Darkness" from the previous album. Which Lord Worm uses over a catchy chorus riff later in the song. The difference is that Matt can actually sing and does a badass but brief job of doing so on this ("Bemoan") and a few other tracks.

"The Plauged" and "Bound Dead" also have actual singing. Matt's vocal range is stunningly impressive and is tragically shorted to just this album thanks to the meat-headed blowback from neckbeards and hipsters screaming "sellouts". When the reality is Cryptopsy has enormous balls for taking such an artistic leap that is far and away the most memorable album.

"Contemplate Regicide" opens up with a very heavy yet groovy riff hauling balls and then goes into some tremolo picking and back to the groove before a mid-paced & highly catchy riff opens up with some gritty, clean vocals. This is followed by a brief piano interlude which adds a delightfully dark atmosphere. Ending on another killer solo. "Silence The Tyrants" also makes use of these atmospheric keys to great effect. The album ends on a pretty cool Faith No more style instrumental.

They have always had a Punk attitude tied into their Death Metal riffing style as well as finding a way to squeeze groove into insanely speedy riffing. The whole 5 minutes of singing on an album that's just under an hour. Plus the 2 songs with VERY brief keyboards does not make this album Deathcore. It's a Cryptopsy album in everyway considering the fact that they have always progressed in some way from one album to the next.

I still await the day they open the gates for Matts full vocal range to be unleashed upon the Feral Death Metal (the true genre they should be filed under) songs they craft. Until then 3 Mile Scream will fulfill some of my desires.

Kev Rowland It has taken 11 years for Canadian Death Metallers Cryptopsy to return with their eighth full-length album, and it is interesting to read the differing reviews which are popping up. Some are saying it is the best since the departure of Lord Worm, some say that may be the case but that doesn’t mean much, others still think their one foray into deathcore immediately excludes them from ever releasing anything worthwhile, then others ask what happened to the band which released the classic ‘None So Vile’? I didn’t hear that one at the time, but I was asked to review ‘None So Live’ some 20 years ago and I was immediately taken by the Canucks, searching out past releases as there was something about them which I immediately enjoyed. But I didn’t come across the studio albums after that, and it is only now they have signed with Nuclear Blast that they have again come onto my radar.

Drummer Flo Mounier has long been widely regarded as one of the very finest in the scene, able to switch styles and beats throughout, always driving the band from the back, and here he is in his element. Christian Donaldson has multi-tracked guitars on top of guitars to create layers of intricacy, while bassist Olivier Pinard either sits in the pocket or even jumps out at the front to add nuances, while singer Matt McGachy is in total control. There is a powerful use of contrast within this album, with slower sections here and there, solos which are more controlled than then absolute shredfest one might expect, while the riffs are massively complex and dynamic. I enjoyed the earlier period of this band, and while the fanbase does appear somewhat split on this, to my ears ‘As Gomorrah Burns’ is a very fine album indeed, with its only major fault being that at just 8 songs and 33 minutes in length it is just too short. If you enjoy technical death metal then this is one to seek out as Cryptopsy are back with a bang.

SilentScream213 Pummeling, unrelenting force, brutal and chaotic to the untrained ear, but held together by immense technical prowess. The album that both Brutal Death and Tech Death are now compared against, Cryptopsy set the bar unreachably high with only their second album. None So Vile is a nonstop riff fest that absolutely assaults the listener with dense, twisted guitarwork and some of the wildest drumming I’ve yet heard.

Cryptopsy didn’t exactly name the game here – taking big influence from bands like Death, Suffcation, and a bit of Nespithe perhaps – but they just did it so well. Brutal Death Metal is among my less-liked Death Metal subgenres because of its tendency to forgo focusing on crafting good riffs to instead create a wall of punishment in auditory form. Similarly, Tech Death, while often very good, can lose points in songwriting when getting too stuck on showing off the musician’s technical prowess. Well, this music is certainly every bit as punishing and impressive, but not for one second did the band forget how write an awesome riff. Every song is jam packed with some of the best, and backed by aggressive drumming that never falls into “constant blast beat” boredom. Its loaded with creative fills and different drumming patterns, even slowing down every so often for some added weight. Wonderfully crafted music!

There is a huge issue for me, and that’s the vocals. They don’t sound terrible, but even when reading along to the lyrics, they are indecipherable, they don’t even attempt to speak or follow along. It’s pathetic, embarrassing really. The vocalist just got in the booth and growled without trying? It’s polar opposite to the incredible hard work and dedication shown by every musician on the record. You would think when all you are contributing to an album filled with such incredible songwriting and musicianship is growled vocals, you would make absolutely sure that you nailed that performance and crafted some lyrical quality to boot. The lyrics unfortunately are just okay usually, sometimes similarly bad. These points ensure the album will never be a masterpiece to me.

siLLy puPPy With a debut album that appeared in 1994, it may seem that CRYPTOSY came late to the death metal party but this early pioneer of old school death metal which emerged from Montreal, Quebec actually started out as early as 1988. In April of that year drummer Mike Atkin, guitarist Steve Thibault and vocalist Dan Greening better known as Lord Worm formed a band called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but quickly decided that the moniker was not metal enough and switched to the more suitable Necrosis. Bassist John Todd then joined and then like any good death metal band, released a bunch of demos and went through turbulent changes. Around 1993 Kevin Weagle joined on bass to release the demo “Ungentle Exhumation” ended up on Gore Records and then caught the attention of the German label Invasion Records.

Invasion Records folded due to financial difficulties and the big shakeup occurred. Weagle was replaced by Martin Fergusson, Atkin was replaced by drummer Flo Mounier and and lead guitarist John Levasseur also jumped on board. This left guitarist Steve Thibault and vocalist Lord Worm as the only founding members and the lineup that recorded the band’s debut full-length release BLASPHEMY MADE FLESH, the only album with this lineup as Fergusson would leave after the tour and become replaced by Eric Langlois who would define the classic CRYPTOSY sound. A lot had changed in the world of death metal since the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder days. Death metal started out as a more brutal form of thrash metal with more depraved vocals but by 1994 when this album debuted the style had seen the advent of the extreme brutality ushered in by Suffocation as well as a new form of technical wizardry pioneered by later Death releases, Atheist and Cynic. CRYPTOSY adopted both aspects.

BLASPHEMY MADE FLESH in many ways is simply a more spruced up take on early death metal and in the process debuted at a time when the death metal scene was starting to go stale. While CRYPTOSY checked off all the death metal attributes such as heavy down-tuned guitar riffs at a million miles per second, incessant percussive mania from Mounier and the depraved guttural growls of Lord Worm, the band had obviously paid attention to what was going on in the death metal underground. While not so technical sounding compared to modern standards, CRYPTOSY took the old school death metal chugs, added a few Morbid Angel squeals and created an even more labyrinthine parade of caustic distortion fueled rampages that ranged from spot on tightness with the instrumental interplay to more sloppy segments of raw lo-fi ferocity. Album number one was made on a budget and the production as a result is quite primitive but given the ugly bestial nature of this album, it actually works quite well IMHO.

What’s unique for BLASPHEMY and an annoyance for some is the excessive use of snare drums for a percussive beat however personally it doesn’t bother me so much. While incessant, even dissonant metal rage is the norm, there is an underlying melodic flow to the compositions which are only exposed as the veil thins such as at the beginning of “Serial Messiah” which begins with a short keyboard run as well as the wailing guitar solos that sporadically pop up offering neoclassical wankery in melancholic minor-key melodies most pronounced on the album’s closer “Pathological Frolic” which would be a major influence on future artists like Necrophagist. Also interesting is how this album sounds a few years older than it is as the chugging riffs often sound like peak era Pantera on album’s like “Cowboys From Hell” with that groove metal swagger. Possibly due to the build up of material.

All in all, i find BLASPHEMY MADE FLESH to be quite the competent debut album with an incessant primeval rawness that made early death metal so fucking cool. The tracks zigzag around like a flaming colony of lemmings jumping over the cliff and into the sea and its not too difficult to hear why Mounier is considered one of the fastest drummers of the era as his frenetic percussive bombast is the backbone for the intense rhythmic drive which the guitars and bass are merely under his gravitational pull. While CRYPTOSY would continue on and see more changes with more polished albums, this one stands tall and proud as the fierce DIY project that generated a wealth of catchy cool death metal tracks straddling the old school by then traditions and pioneering the brave new world of tech death laced with brutality. Solid. And yeah the original freaky eye album cover is the best one!

voila_la_scorie “Blasphemy Made Flesh” is the debut album by Montreal technical death metal band, Cryptopsy. There are three versions: the original 1994 Hammerheart release, a 1997 re-release by Displeased Records, and a 2001 re-release by Century Media, which features a different cover.

This is my first experience with Cryptopsy and I was interested in the band because I had discovered that Montreal had a hot death metal scene going and I decided to check out some groups. After my usual cursory listen on YouTube, I decided to get this album first because of the frequent cropping up of the bass guitar, which reminded me of Quebec metal legends, Voivod.

The sound on my CD copy, the original Hammerheart release, is pretty poor when going from any much better-produced album. First, I have to knock the volume up three clicks, and the sound quality difference between a well-produced, more recent death metal album and this one is enormous. However, like many albums, “Blasphemy” doesn’t sound so bad once you get into the album atmosphere. Like many extreme metal bands of the day, recording quality was frequently pretty poor.

Cryptopsy’s sound is heavy, brutal, and pummeling. The guitars are really low, so much so that the bass guitar notes really pop out at times, especially when the bass gets a brief solo break (solo here meaning playing alone for a bar and not lead). What I appreciate is that the band can employ both very high speed playing and slow down for some very heavy, crushing riffs. I have also noted that Cryptopsy know how to play slow and heavy and keep the drums in tempo. Many bands I have heard recently will play medium tempo music but have the bass drums and snare going full tilt. It sounds great usually but sometimes seems unnecessary. On this album slower playing often means a slower beat. Conversely, sometimes the drums strike at a fairly slow tempo while the guitars are going nuts. These changes in speed, though, are good for appreciating the some of the riffs and guitar work.

Vocalist, Lord Worm (Dan Greening), delivers really deep, guttural barking and some mega-screams that are as frightening as a storm banshee trying to enter your room on a blustery night to wake the dead. At first I was a bit put off his vocal style because I seriously could not pick out anything he belch-roared. I looked at the lyrics for a track like “Open Face Surgery” which reads:

“I’ve learned to control my thoughts / Ever since I recognized the first eavesdropper / Those who listen in on my thoughts / My logic, my sanity”

But what I can pick out at best sounds like: “Wudaboit, biddatboit, budahboit, biidah! Weahbuot, biddahbuot, buadbuit, biidadut!” There are times when I think I can almost decipher the gruff utterances and follow along with the lyrics, but then the vocalizations stop when I’ve only reached the third line of a four-line verse. Song after song, I really have not one iota of a clue what words comprise the lyrics of these tracks. Reading the lyrics and listening to the songs I feel like the lyrics are the translations of an angry Neanderthal’s ranting. But I actually don’t mind. Listening to the whole album straight through it all becomes part of the sonic experience. A funny thing, even the spoken lines in one track aren’t easy to pick out. “Serial Messiah”, by its opening church organ notes and a meekly speaking youth uttering, “Get off me you bastard”, would seem to be about Catholic priests who prey upon young boys. But we hear hurried footsteps, a door open, and the youth’s attempt at defiance, and then this is followed by a deep voice saying what sounds like “I need gas for the lawn!” Or maybe it’s “I need ask for the Lord”. I am totally unsure. But again, I consider the vocals part of the entertainment factor so I’m okay with them.

The only real complaint I have is that the snare drum is mixed quite loud compared to the much lower-toned guitars and so sometimes it seems the dominant sound in the mix is the high-speed snare drum playing which leaves the guitars just deep rumbles barely discernable above the percussion and demonic barking.

I’m curious about some of the band’s more recent albums. This first offering has its strengths, mostly in the actual music played, but the production needs improvement. Not a total winner but good enough to merit further investigation into this band.