Bionic Swarm
by Cryptosis

From Mercury 04/01/2021 04:36 | #268042

(Just an all around great Thrash record and great album in general. This has rekindled my love of the genre. If you like metal or thrash even a little, this is recommended to you.)

It's been a long time since I've fallen so hard for a Thrash Metal album. This album has *it*, whatever it may be - a clear description alludes me. I think it has to do with that tightrope that Thrash, and especially Technical Thrash such as this, has to walk between the technical and the visceral. The heady and the animalistic. Between the hardcore punk and technical thrash forebears that sit on each side. To balance that is the trick. And this album has done it. Even at its most awe-inspiringly fast and nimble and breakneck the music still sounds pissed off. It's glorious, really!

On tracks such as "Perpetual Motion/Conjuring the Egoist" the band manages to conjure (lol, not intentional) that heady sci-fi vibe found on some Voivod albums and then a second later, while maintaining a tempo and a riff pattern that sounds fucking hard, the band and especially the vocalist sound ready to beat the shit out of something.

The dramatic and "spooky" intro to "Decypher" is excellent and of course the rest of the song is too. "Death Technology" somehow manages to be the most badass and chugging riff imaginable while also melting your face with the chops on display. Meanwhile, "Transcendance" is just straight ahead fast FAST brutal Thrash, designed to be the soundtrack of destruction. Really "Transcendence" lives up to its name.

The vocalist is great. The reason I love his work here is he isn't too over-the-top or theatrical, he mostly just has this very punk rock growling pissed off sound. On occasion he lets out Tom Arraya-esque falsetto screams which usually sound cool but on occasion sound a bit much. The rest of the band is stellar and they are each incredibly talented musicians.

I can't remember the last newly-released Thrash album I've loved quite as much as this. The last time I fell for a thrash album to this degree was my relatively recent revisit of the Exodus classic Bonded By Blood, but that hardly counts. This new Cryptosis album really is amazing and highly recommended to fans of Thrash - there are a lot of you out there. If you love Coroner, Kreator, Vektor, Voivod, or hell! if you like legends like early Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, Sepultera, etc, and on and on, you NEED to give this a listen. Maybe you won't like it as much as I do, but I think you'll like it at least.

(Oh and I just learned that this isn't really their debut - if it was I would be gobsmacked - but this is the first album these guys have released as Cryptosis. Previously they released a few albums and projects as the band Distillator. Anyway, just wanted to note that for your information.