It was while spinning my wheels at the mercy of a delayed flight from London to Berlin, on about the fifth listen to As Gomorrah Burns, the forthcoming record by Montreal, Canada’s Cryptopsy on Nuclear Blast Records that the album finally opened up, like a poisoned flower, and revealed its full merit.
Cryptopsy has been pummelling skulls for almost as long as Death Metal has been a thing and too many members have been churned through the jaws of the hungry beast to keep count. and since the band was reborn from its previous incarnation as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in 1992, there’s been but one constant – drummer and backing vocalist Flo Mounier.
The drummer is the one constant? That’s right. But this is not just any drummer. This is Flo Mounier, and he’s a beast.
All the way back in 1996, a near decade before the second longest-serving member of the current lineup (guitarist Christian Donaldson) joined the fray, Cryptopsy released a record of absolutely blistering, gut-boiling, extreme metal brilliance in None So Vile. And I won’t pretend to be the greatest authority on what the band (in its many forms) has done since, but I’m pretty confident that no Cryptopsy iteration ever reached that same high again. In fact, I’m here pretty much purely on the basis of one amazing drummer and a genius record, recorded almost three decades ago by 25% of the current lineup.
Maybe there’ll be a few flashes of the old brilliance, some drumming virtuosity and a bit of Death Metal nostalgia, I thought. Well, there’s been some underestimation in this here town. As Gomorrah Burns isn’t None So Vile (what is?), but it’s good. It’s really, really good.
To live up to such an album title a record should really be a relentless fireball of ferocity, a monster that rings your throat from start to finish. It’s fucking Gomorrah, and it’s burning. Plus, there’s some kind of zombie bat on the cover and it looks pissed.
Fortunately, from the second that opener “Lascivious Undivine” rushes out of the gate in a pummelling frenzy the band pretty much deliver just that. From one track to the next comes a series of high-speed, blunt force, battering riffs, transitioning with ease into slower, headbanging passages.
Flo Mounier’s drumming brilliance is on full display throughout, but he’s ably accompanied by the rest of the band. Lead vocalist Matt McGachy screams, growls and snarls with conviction. I couldn’t tell you a single word of what he’s saying, but he sure sounds like he means it. Guitarist Donaldson has a bag full of riffs and he’ll even throw in some occasional lead work on tracks like “Godless Deceiver”, and “Flayed the Swine”. Bassist Olivier Pinard gets his moment to shine on “The Righteous Lost” (a track also notable for some blood-curdling screams). There are some surprises, too. On “III Ender” there’s a flash of some Meshuggah-evoking polyrhythms (I guess that’s what they are? I mean, it reminds me of Meshuggah…), while the moody intro of penultimate track “Obeisant” is almost industrial in tone.
The rest of the tracks largely follow a certain formula, but it’s a formula of powerful, high-energy, full-force, creative Extreme Metal. While As Gomorrah Burns is not a record of some earth-shattering innovation, it never gets boring from one track to the next.
So, it turns out that Cryptopsy in 2023 rules. Eight albums in, eleven years on since their last full-length and five since the second of two EPs, could this be the start of a consistent run with a stable lineup? Whatever follows, Cryptopsy can’t be accused of living off former glories. Watch it burn.
Buy the album here: https://cryptopsyofficial.bandcamp.com/album/as-gomorrah-burns
8 / 10
TOM OSMAN