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CRYPTAL ECHOES
Cryptal Echoes EP

Urban Lurk (2024)
Rating: 7.5/10

Oozing from Austria’s sewer system is the foreboding sound of Cryptal Echoes, a morbid bunch of death-doom obsessive’s whose debut EP is the musical equivalent to suffering a slow and painful death by a crushing anaconda.

What predator needs pace when all it has to do is slither up behind and entangle you in its smothering coils. That’s what I experienced here, a slow moving yet all powerful entity constructed of engulfing riffs, dismal percussion and cavernous vocalisations. The only bluster to permeate the thick fog comes via the sharp, cold flurry of ‘Spiritual Torture’. Everything else is just piles of wet clay dumped on you as you lay in your open grave waiting for death.

Morbidly constructed, this six song EP is riddled with old school filth, murkily snaking its way through swampy terrain before popping itself back in a dirt-caked hole for hibernation. The only intention here is to drag your sorry carcass into its jaws, crush your bones, suck your blood and consume your flesh.

Pace is a rare thing within this dank and claustrophobic domain, Cryptal Echoes dwell in squalid abodes clogged with silt and only when such caverns begin to crumble does the foul sound of desolation come to the fore.

Dragging, aching and despairing slithering slogs are what make up opening track ‘Descent Into Realms Of Doom’, and from here on in the title track and ‘Consumed In Dissolution’ maintain the low levels of sediment scraping. However, even with its lethargy it’s not a snooze fest, but instead vintage death-doom for mongers of the putridly organic and archaic.

Neil Arnold

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