Cryptopsy are extreme. They sound like a dozen Kalashnikovs being fired into a tin shed. Relentless, furious, crushing metal. But they are technical wizards. Seeing Christian Donaldson work the fret board is truly inspiring, unleashing venomous torrents of shreddage while headbanging like a rabid horse.
Their technique is almost mathematical – syncopated, spasmodic, but ordered chaos. Most death metal bands appropriate the pentagram as their icon. Cryptopsy ‘s sound is more like an isosceles.
Flo Mounier is wicked on the drums, hammering out the most complex patterns without breaking a sweat. Matt McGachy is genuinely frightening. He has hair like a warlock’s – down to his glutes, which he flings around like his head’s in a tumble dryer, achieving a radius wider than the wingspan of an albatross. Collectively they must have about five meters of hair.
McGachy wails like a pterodactyl, screeching and growling with amazing range.
Their set covers their entire repertoire spanning twenty years from their first album Blasphemy Made Flesh to their most recent self-titled effort. The crowd is churning and writhing to ‘Red-Skinned Scapegoat’ and other crashing tracks.
Gregory Porter
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