Deranged dutch experimentalists Cryptae return with another enigmatic mess of malformed and deviant experimental raw death metal, unfolding a single staggering eighteen-plus-minute track of complete aural delirium. Within the mammoth headfuck of a song the duo cover an enormous amount of ground, letting loose on literally all of their most demented musical delusions and tapping into a monstrous pool of influences to unleash an aural pandemonium of absolutely unseen lunacy. Extremely cerebral and sophisticated, yet raw, repulsive, visceral and mercilessly unforgiving, on "Vestigial" Cryptae blur the lines between improvisation and deliberate erraticism and draw influence from a surreal array of seemingly antithetic influences ranging from Morbid Angel, to Magma, John Coltrane, Macabre and beyond, to construct an hallucinatory sonic maze of utmost brutality, where shapeshifting tempos, vertigo-inducing repetitions, and demented song structures are meticulously designed to disorient the listener and annihilate their last shred of sanity.
Vestigial is a co-release between Sentient Ruin Laboratories (US vinyl) and Tartarus Records (EU vinyl).
Single sided 12" on white vinyl with etching on B-side.
Strikingly unique, visually insane, and sonically decimating, Netherlands-based Cryptae are an extreme metal anomaly devoted to the most liminal and cerebral extents of sonic deconstruction and to the most aberrant thresholds of experimentalism. With a background of its two members forged within the abstract and improvisational realms of free-jazz, noise rock, industrial, and shapeshifting avantgarde, Cryptae have shown astonishingly calculating levels of insanity in crafting their own vision of modern experimental extreme metal, spewing forth a maze of deviant and bludgeoning death metal chaos that aims straight at the listener's central nervous system with the intent of dismantling their every layer of sanity directly from within. The two sociopaths behind the project are primarily involved in many industrial and experimental entities like Dead Neanderthals and Celestial Bodies to name a few, showing just how diverse and enigmatic their background and influences are, an aspect of their creative DNA which has irreparably shaped the madness and delirium which permeates Cryptae. A careful and demanding listener will notice that beyond the utter chaos and destruction summoned by the duo through a meticulous reinterpretation of 90's most structurally ambitious and punishing death metal (Incantation, Immolation, Morbid Angel), lies a realm of ungraspable and disorienting experimentalism which has tapped into influences as diverse and absurd and Swans, Magma, and Discharge - making Crytpae one of the most deranged and visionary death metal oddities to appear in Europe in recent times.
Truly unique in its concept and execution, an easy favourite. Those one-note monochords play the stereo field nicely, great use of synths and pads, sparse but efficient vocals. Ritual, droney, occult...what's not to love? Plug in, tune in, drop out. Deadpanist
PSA: if there was an album you heard a couple years ago and thought it was ok, listen to it again and you might love it.
That's what happened to me with this album. I cannot fathom why it didn't stick with me back then. Same thing happened with Decoherence's Unitarity for that matter. Matten
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