ALBUM REVIEW: As Gomorrah Burns – Cryptopsy
In the annals of death metal history, especially when it comes its technical and brutal variants, few bands have been as influential on the genre’s extreme outliers than Canada’s CRYPTOPSY. Listen to the vast majority of of brutal and tech death acts that have formed in the last 25 years and the fingerprints of the Montreal quartet are more than evident, with the band firmly establishing themselves at the head of the death metal pack on a lot of metrics, from creativity to intensity to even live performance, with only the genre’s heaviest hitters being able to comfortably match or surpass them. Their recorded output has been almost exclusively great, whether that’s stone cold classics like None So Vile and Blasphemies Made Flesh, or the likes of The Book Of Suffering EPs, but the band have never seemed to quite match their early 90s peak. That is, until now; their latest, eighth album, As Gomorrah Burns, is easily one of the best things that CRYPTOPSY have put out this century, boasting a startling level of skill and aggression that is frankly mind-blowing.
Lascivious Undivine goes straight for the jugular, with dizzying guitar work, punishing drums and acerbic vocals immediately throwing the listener headlong into a noxious brew of brutal and technical death metal. It’s an incredibly fast and intense start, with a few reserved moments providing brief respite from the aural assault, setting a fantastic tone for the rest of the album. In Abeyance continues in a similar vein, with angular guitars, machine gun precise drums and dense gutturals, interspersed with feral shrieks, embracing the rabid and unpredictable sound of the opening track, but adopting a shorter, punchier version of it that makes this brief burst of brutality an early stand out.
Godless Deceiver keeps up the frenetic pace, leaning heavily into blistering, chaotic speeds, and lots of brilliant, jarring rhythms that add a discordant layer into the mix that makes this sound visceral, with only a soaring solo and a few melodic riffs breaking from this monstrous formula. Ill Ender is every bit as caustic, but shifts towards a groove-laden, chunky guitar sound at points, albeit with the same sort of bestial moments and whirlwinds of intricacy that characterised earlier tracks, making this feel more grounded and accessible without sacrificing any of the overbearing aggression and full throttle attack in the process.
Flayed The Swine shifts towards a virtuosic, melodic guitar sound that pairs the searing intensity of the album’s first half with a catchy and memorable feel, whilst making sure not to dial back any of the belligerent and bellicose elements, being stringent and biting in many places whilst possessing a focused edge. The Righteous Lost couples imaginative basslines, nauseating guitar work and vicious vocal performances to create an absolute juggernaut with a lots of excellent musical flourishes on all fronts, and is another masterclass in how to write world class technical death metal.
Obeisant slows the pace to a crawl, proving to be a more measured and atmospheric song than the rest of the album, quickly building to a far weightier, energetic approach that returns to the caustic style that has dominated this album, but placing emphasis on slick, polished leads and touches of deathcore. The track’s final moments bleed seamlessly into Praise The Filth, the album’s final, monolithic offering. This is a track that utilises slower, ponderous moments too, and the technically proficient sections, although still there in force, are stripped away from the sound, placing the focus squarely on tighter hooks and muscular, throaty gutturals, with some amazingly jarring parts and a cavernous, imposing sound. It’s a suitably dark and epic way to bring proceedings to a close, layering in so many different elements that it feels like a summation of the band’s collective influences.
Usually, three decades deep and eight albums into a band’s career, you don’t expect them to pull out what is arguably not only their best work in years, but also some of their best work ever, which makes this album even more impressive. Rather than rest on their laurels, CRYPTOPSY have created an album that is genuinely up there with the likes of None So Vile and Blasphemies Made Flesh, both well regarded and established classics in their own right. Every song on As Gomorrah Burns sounds fantastic, with even the weakest tracks here being absolutely astonishing in their technical prowess and musical depth. No doubt the 11-year gap between this album and their last – 2012’s self-titled effort – will have allowed the band to germinate the ideas that feature here and make this album as stunning as it is, but it’s nonetheless an astounding shift. Normally, at this point in a review, something is said about a “return to form”, but in truth, CRYPTOPSY never lost what made them such as pioneering act in the first place. Rather, this album reasserts something that should be a well established fact by this point: CRYPTOPSY are among the best death metal acts as far as creativity is concerned, and very few bands can hold a candle to them when they are at their best.
Rating: 10/10
As Gomorrah Burns is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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