No genre is for everyone, but extremely technical death metal really separates the men from the boys. There are folks who can handle the lightning-speed tempo changes, the drumbeats that sound like a thousand locusts crash-landing on the roof of a corrugated metal shed, and the squiggly high-pitched guitar solos. Other people — and make no mistake, they’re the majority — prefer melody and choruses.
Cryptopsy is definitely not for them. These French-Canadian psychos are one of the most underrated, under-recognized bands in metal. Each of their first three studio albums — Blasphemy Made Flesh, None So Vile, and Whisper Supremacy — is a crash course in pure death metal, possessing all the qualities described above, taken to horrifying levels of intensity and monomaniacal focus. Their fourth release, And Then You’ll Beg, was a little cleaner than its predecessors, but was still miles from commercial crossover capability. They haven’t put out a new studio disc since 2000, but there’s one on the way this year — the first since None So Vile to feature original vocalist Lord Worm. If mind-roasting, head-spinning technical death metal is your thing, Cryptopsy is your band.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2005.