For over thirty years, Cryptopsy has been one of the foremost names in death metal. Even in the highly skillful realm of extreme metal musicianship, they have stood out, consistently achieving a level of technical proficiency that few could hope to emulate since their 1994 debut album, Blasphemy Made Flesh, and particularly on their magnum opus, None So Vile, released in 1996. This is despite numerous lineup changes along the way that might have destabilised less tenacious outfits.
Three decades on, the Montreal maestros are set to release their ninth full-length album, An Insatiable Violence, via the Season of Mist label on June 20th, and I can’t help but wonder: have the years mellowed them at all? Have the quotidian travails of touring the world over the course of so many years, combined with everything else that life throws at you as you age, caused them to lose their edge or to dial down the extremity of their music in favour of something less demanding on the joints and less abrasive to the ears?
They waste absolutely no time in getting down to brutal business in The Nimis Adoration, as a short intro riff and a scream from Matt McGachy bring us straight into a gravity blast beat so fast, there must be sparks flying from the rim of Flo Mounier’s snare drum, and smoke rising from the fingers of Christian Donaldson and Olivier Pinard as they tear into frenzied chromatic riffs. Rhythmically, it switches from blast beat to speed metal to groove metal – the latter being a style that makes its presence felt at numerous points throughout the album – leading us to a melodic solo that is highly reminiscent of something from Heartwork-era Carcass. Lyrically, the song bears a resemblance to Joy Division’s Atrocity Exhibition, in that it concerns a performer’s humanity being forsaken to appease a baying crowd – in this case in the form of a competitive eater – an insatiable violence indeed. It has a poetic poignancy to it that is juxtaposed by the brutality of McGachy’s vocal delivery, and that of the music in general.
Doing harm to oneself or to others for the purpose of gratification or validation is a recurring theme throughout the album. McGachy has stated that he intended it to be a critique of modern society through the prism of the internet and in particular social media. Its addictive and exploitative nature, and the way in which lives are degraded and destroyed in service of it. As he states: “We’re continuously trying to feed this algorithm of the machine while it’s totally tearing us apart socially and psychologically.” This is evident in songs such as the opening track, or Fool’s Last Acclaim, which are concerned with the destructive exploitation of oneself for validation and attention. To quote the lyrics:
It’s their reactions that instigate
My consequential ill ended fate
I will become the one
That you’ll all adore
This is also the case in The Art of Emptiness:
My densest part was the void in my head
An encompassing sense of devastating dread
This unnerving lifestyle
Voraciously fed upon
The end was inevitable
But they will certainly say
I was memorable
As for the exploitation of others, I quote Dead Eyes Replete:
This voided star Is all that is left.
This vacuous idol’s identity is now bereft.
And also the album’s first single, Until There’s Nothing Left:
The net is wide
Spread across the web
Your greed for pleasure is too vast
And will be your undoing
The inspiration for this recurring theme came to McGachy in a dream. As he elaborates:
It’s about a person that wakes up every day and fixes a machine. Tinkers with it, tries to make it better all day long, sweating in the sun, and then at night, they strap themself into this machine and the machine tortures them, and they love it. Then they wake up the next day and fix it again to make it more efficient, to keep harnessing it, and then just keep doing it over and over again.
This appears to be the literal meaning of second single Malicious Needs, which concludes the album in gruesome and harrowing fashion, though it serves as a constant metaphor throughout.
I certainly did not expect the disquisition to extend to online dating on a Cryptopsy album, but here, in the form of Our Great Deception, we appear to find them addressing the parlous state of the search for love via the apps, and how they, ironically, seem to be making us lonelier and more isolated than ever, or as McGachy puts it: “Isolated in plain sight,” in a situation that leaves us: “Longing for connections to fill the void,” lamenting the “…endless abyss of tantalizing choices,” that ultimately leave us dissatisfied, as: “Reality doesn’t match the images adored.” As it transpires, dating apps might just be the most monstrous things ever to be referenced in death metal lyrics.
For those who are not connoisseurs of music of such intensity, there will be a sense almost of being browbeaten by the sheer, unrelenting extremity of it; a feeling of being bludgeoned, as if with a baseball bat, albeit one swung by the skillful hands of a keyhole surgeon. Some will inevitably expect to hear just a savage, snarling, scary noise, and there will be little on offer here to assuage such sentiments. As the Canadians have been making the most brutal death metal for three decades, it’s possibly a little late in the day to expect them to throw in a bit of clean singing, or to move in a melodic metalcore direction. It’s a shame for such people, as for those who can take a more nuanced view of music of such unyielding heaviness, there will be much to savour. There’s the lovely twangy bass work in Until There’s Nothing Left that is so reminiscent of Death’s The Philosopher. There’s the eerie euphony of The Art of Emptiness, and it’s glorious neoclassical-style guitar solo. There’s another solo reminiscent of the aforementioned Heartwork by Carcass, and some inspired use of harmonics towards the end of Our Great Deception. There’s the Dimebag Darrell signature pig squeals on Malicious Needs, and its slow, stately, funereal coda that draws the album to a close. There’s the simple fact that Flo Mounier cannot possibly be human; what he achieves around the kit is far beyond mortal constraints. We’d probably assume it was machine-generated if we hadn’t seen him replicate it live so regularly.
There’s also a couple of notable contributions from previous Cryptopsy vocalists. Mike DiSalvo provides vocals on Embrace the Nihility, while, poignantly, the cover art is by Martin Lacroix, who died in 2024. Lacroix did not get the opportunity to contribute musically to any of the band’s studio albums, so it is nice that he has been able to contribute to An Insatiable Violence via another artistic medium.
Most of all, there’s the intellectual vigour of the lyrics, and the critique of the destructive tendencies of a society bent on instant gratification in the digital arena – the “relentless dopamine drip”, as they put it on Embrace the Nihility; a “…vortex,” that “…has consumed us all.” . This is brutal music for sure, but it’s a reflection of a world that is brutal, even in the places that were meant to offer us an escape from its horrors. We will hopefully alleviate those horrors for the band, temporarily at least, by awarding the album four and a half devil horns.
Tracklisting:
1. The Nimis Adoration (04:10)
2. Until There’s Nothing Left (03:58)
3. Dead Eyes Replete (03:57)
4. Fools Last Acclaim (03:25)
5. The Art of Emptiness (04:15)
6. Our Great Deception (04:20)
7. Embrace the Nihility (03:50)
8. Malicious Needs (05:51)
(33;46)
Band Line-up:
Matt McGachy – Vocals
Christian Donaldson – Guitars
Olivier Pinard – Bass
Flo Mounier – Drum
Check out our interview with Matt McGachy of Cryptopsy
Can’t wait to devour Cryptopsy’s new album? RSVP for this week’s Bandcamp Listening Party and hear all eight brutally technical tracks before it comes out.
An Insatiable Violence Bandcamp Listening Party
Thursday, June 17 @ 1:30 pm ET
RSVP
https://cryptopsyofficial.bandcamp.com/merch/an-insatiable-violence-listening-party
