1996
Technical Death Metal
In my eyes, Cryptopsy’s second album is one of the defining
moments of its genre. Taking everything that made the debut so good, and
multiplying every aspect of it by two. NSV is one of the most brutal and
interesting albums out there. The production quality, speed and overall
intensity is massively improved over the debut and while the production
certainly is a lot cleaner it works in the album’s favour and is certainly
nowhere near as glossy and over-polished as a lot of modern tech death tends to
be, mostly to its own detriment in the eyes of many listeners. No, this album
will still blow your head clean off. Call it a happy medium.
The ever insane sounding Lord Worm gives maybe his best
performance on this album. The guy sounds like a fucking rabid animal. I’ve
seen some opinions that his performance is too monotonous or gravelly, and I
have to disagree. He throws in all kinds of possessed noises and on the whole
just sounds fully evil. His lyrics are as usual very well written with a poetic
quality to them, disturbing and articulate as opposed to many standard Death
Metal lyrics. Sure they’re nasty and everything, but he does it with a flair
that is pretty uncommon to this style of music (he’s a teacher of English, somewhat
unsurprisingly). Jon Levasseur and Steve Thibault (who for some reason is not
credited, he left after this album) contribute some infectious riffing and soloing
with abstract and twisted structure and a keen sense of melody without being
anything near “melodic Death Metal”. Flo Mounier is as crazy behind the kit as
ever, using the hyperblasts a lot more on this album and doing some backing
screams to good effect. New bassist Eric Langlois is all over the place, a more
than worthy successor to the excellent bass player on the debut album. He uses
more a funk style and tone with some savage slap playing during the breakdowns
and is perfectly audible. For 1996 this is surely a serious benchmark
soundwise.
Although most of their albums have something good to offer,
None So Vile is perhaps the highlight of this band’s work. Cryptopsy has always
been a musician’s band as well as a listener’s band and the musicianship on
display here is nothing short of seriously impressive. It may seem a bit crazy
and jarring if you’re unaccustomed to this kind of DM but personally I Iove this
kind of demented sounding music. Canada seems to be the wellspring of some of
the most crazy and fascinating music (these guys, Gorguts, early Kataklysm,
Purescence and Obliveon to name a few) in metal. What are they smoking?
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