CRYPTOPSY
The Best Of Us Bleed
Century Media (2012)
Rating: 8/10
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The ever hideous and extreme Cryptopsy have returned with another skin-shredder of a record. Québec’s finest have collated 32 tracks on this two-disc compilation – including a batch of live cuts, rehearsals and three new songs – to bang your already flayed head to.
For those unfamiliar with the technical barrage of this bunch of ungodly heroes, then be warned, this is no slow motion chug fest. Instead, you’ll be (mis)treated with a gory mass of jarring intensity that refuses to let up once you’re in its tangled web.
When at their slowest, the Canadian band are still hellish. ‘Silence The Tyrants’ provides the occasional mid-tempo chug, but it rarely lasts, and for the most part a track of this ilk is stained by hyper drums, harsh vocal screams and rasps, and sonic guitars that can best be described as schizophrenic in their demented approach. This is death metal taken to the extreme.
Cryptopsy are a wonderfully complex monster, that only exist to bewilder and batter. ‘The Headsmen’, ‘Carrionshine’, ‘We Bleed’ and ‘Endless Cemetary’ all go for throat, but in differing ways. The latter has a more darker, classic death metal approach until it reaches its bizarre mid-section of quacking vocal shrieks and twisted arrangements. ‘The Headsman’ is immediately more rampant on the senses; an obliterating track featuring blast-beast drums and more wretched vocals.
This band isn’t just heavy, they provide a soundscape that refuses to settle – combining awkward rhythms and ultra-fast pounding, solos flailing, cavorting, mood shifting, jarring and above all intricate horrors all delivered to the maximum of extremity.
‘Holodomor’ is a nightmarish frenzy of grating guitars and guttural growls; a track that jerks the blood and shakes the soul. ‘Worship Your Demons’ features some stunning machine gun drums and juddering bass-lines, and ‘A Graceful Demise’ is just as unkind in its approach, a face-ripping, bone-breaking that only slows some 90-seconds in, with the vocals taking on demonic proportions as the guitars grind the sinews. It’s all very hellish stuff.
Take your pick from any of these tracks, and whether it’s the gurgled chaos of ‘Voices Of Unreason’ or the manic complexity of ‘White Worms’, one thing is sure with Cryptopsy; they aren’t here to play nicely.
Neil Arnold
