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Rating: Underrated.
Hugely underrated.
This is what I think every time I listen to "And Then You'll Beg", the fourth studio album (and the last with Mike Di Salvo on vocals) for the Canadian combo Cryptopsy. The album in question was released two years after the magnificent "Whisper Supremacy", which in turn followed the unparalleled masterpiece "None So Vile". After the departure of Lord Worm, who with his unique and inimitable growl and unmistakable lyrics had left an indelible mark on the band's early albums ("Blasphemy Made Flesh" and the aforementioned "None So Vile"), Cryptopsy embarked on a new path, moving further away from the relative "simplicity" of their early compositions to delve into an ever more technical and brutal death metal, seasoned with strong progressive influences. Thus, once they recruited new vocalist Mike Di Salvo, "Whisper Supremacy" was released, the first step towards an evolution that culminates in this "And Then You'll Beg". However, before proceeding, it's necessary to break a lance in favor of Di Salvo, accused of tarnishing the band's sound with his vocals. Personally, I have always found his vocal style perfect, impeccable for what Cryptopsy were playing in those years. Having said that, let's proceed with the analysis of the album...
The album opens with "...And Then It Passes", 5 minutes of brutal and highly technical death metal: an indecipherable structure, supported by countless tempo changes and incredibly complex riffs, a veritable locomotive launched at the speed of light towards the listener, featuring the unusually expressive and furious vocals of Di Salvo. After such a majestic opening, how do you manage to do better? Cryptopsy succeeds, delivering with the next track one of their finest compositions, a track worthy of purchasing the album alone: "We Bleed". Even today, after countless listens, I scarcely find the words to describe it: 6 minutes of a suite that seems to encapsulate all the elements that have made this band great (or better yet "immense"), with Flou Mounier's drumming as always shocking and compelling (after the performance in "Once Was Not", this remains his best performance), Eric Langlois's bass as alive and pulsing as ever and the Levasseur-Auburn guitar duo capable of alternating compressed and intricate riffs with solos of incredible melodic taste.
The remaining songs, though inferior to "We Bleed", continue their path along the lines of excellence, showcasing the creative genius of a band at the peak of its power under every light. A small curiosity is related to the eighth track, "Back To The Worms", which is actually a revisit of a track taken from the band's first demo "Ungentle Exhumation". Thus, after the atmospheric intro of "Screams Go Unheard" and the subsequent (magnificent, I might add) frontal assault, we reach the conclusion of this "And Then You'll Beg", the penultimate gem (there is still the morbid "Once Was Not") before the collapse that occurred with the recent "The Unspoken King", which, despite an intriguing artwork, marked an inexplicable and disastrous fall into the realms of death-core...
I began the review with one word: "Underrated"...Why has such a jewel gone unnoticed by most for years? And mind you, I'm not just talking about fringe kids with Suicide Silence t-shirts, but also pure genre aficionados...Why? Many accuse Cryptopsy of going too "far" with this album, sacrificing listenability in favor of a too daunting and technical proposal, for which even repeated and frequent listens are not enough to enjoy it...You know what I say? This is precisely the charm of this platter, its insane, inhuman inscrutability... Now it's up to you... We are facing one of the best death metal albums released from 2000 to today (alongside "Destroy The Opposition" and "In Their Darkened Shrines" by Nile), eclectic as few, unmistakable, unique, special...
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 ...and Then It Passes (05:06)
The distance it allows at first
The change is felt through the air
The mother of nature speaks discontently
As death tends to whisper defiance
Thinks it's surprising, fully expected
Heavily unwelcomed, purposely unhidden
There to accomodate
A more sensible whiskey warmth
Had my fills of somber hearts and lost souls
Bleak ember grey, dismal drear
Catastrophic in its own simple right
Tolerance as low as low
Unfortunately cold is cold
Scold the mother whore
For shaking the season's core
Unprepared as always
Suspiciously sneaking into
Mammoth proportions
An emblem of frigid bones
And desolate hopes
The here is now
An icy adversary of a piercing sort
Wintry blue lunacy in the eyes
No choice but to hibernate
Against these skies
Biting bitterness
Bitten
Blizzard blowing
Nipping at the fine line of your neck
Horrendous glacial
Facial disfiguration
Beaten red raw by the arctic fist
Pummelled quite considerably
Frozen bricks hold the spirit down
Destined to find the elusive shelter
Set aside reclusion from the numbing mind
Winteresque barren portrait
Painted miserably white
Living Earth
Postponed in bereavement
Temporarily cessated
Untimely anytime
This unthawing persistance
Our fine feathered friends
Seem smarter than they appear
Should've scrambled to join them
On these months that are so feared
Ferocious gusts, tempestuous winds
Drifting bales, infinitized
Unbeareble haze
Trapped like a rat in a maze
Just when you thought enough was too much
For the desperate masses... and then it passes
02 We Bleed (06:18)
First the climb
Become the status
Regained sight
Undercontrolled
On a directionless path
One should be
The quiet one who would not see
Resemblance in self
And all those spawned
All in the same
Suffering sadness
Incredible truth
Justice to this madness
Remember, forget who you are
Negative and bored
And have given a little too much thought
Here today, long gone yesterday
Saw a million zombies like me
Some of whom have entered the fray
A man with nothing to lose
Will kill quicker than a wolf
Will tear your flesh
And a man with all to gain
He will do the same
Now has easily passed the threshold
We bleed
Like the rest of you pigs
We breed
Fuck like the rest of you parasites
We plead
For an end
The need
For selfishness
We bleed
Ourselves instead
Tortured
Wondering whether
The process of thinking
Duplicates itself
Mirrored by maniacal malicious intentions
Carried out with ease
We bleed
A man with nothing to lose
Has struck swifter than a snake
Displays cold survival
And a man with all to gain
He has done the same
But has never crossed the threshold
Leap across the line
Teeter back and forth
On the brink
Decide which path
You take every hour
03 Voice of Unreason (02:53)
Ossuary for the misinformed
You´d end up being amazed
At what you´d see inside
The whisps of knowledge denied
And to think that someone´s implied
It´s a better place to reside
Take that voice of unreason
Asked that question
About the chaos
That lies dormant within
Have pondered through a pond
Of useless information
Fooled, tricked
But I´m slowly coming around
Fell for it once, never again
Ignorance is bliss
For the miner of fools gold
Can´t teach a dog, that´s too old
The motherfucker´ll take a bite of the poison
Indoctrinate unfiltered lore
Teaching
Learning
Absolutely nothing
Intravenously force fed
A slave state of intelligence
Meant to break these bonds at some point
Howsabout now
The bottom line
I´ve saved you the time
Wasted on a lost cause
No longer
04 My Prodigal Sun (02:15)
Reach at the unreachable
Futile attempts
It's succumbed to its own laws
Rise and falls
Like building blocks
Pick 'em up
Knock 'em down
Another day
A different season
Hate eternal overshadows
Dispersed in clouds
My prodigal son
Returns for the sun dogs
To embelish in angelic rays
Raise our hands in anticipation
Conquest procession participation
When sweat lies and burns the eyes
Fry the river dries
Sunburn-orama drama
Accepted with open arms
Cult of fire
Sect inferno
Desperately
Long awaited arrival
05 Shroud (04:05)
We'll save your children
Follow this illuminated line
This light that's held before you
Enshrined beneath this glare
Straight eye sare
Roped in, ensnared
Lost will of yours
Slipped past you
A passing glance
Long ago
Deity like foreskin
Draped lazily over
Your dying perception
Hunted by a illusion
Doubled over in delusion
Cumshot religions
Unions of weakness
Dazed and proud
Buried under the shroud
The blessed beasts
Worshipped in droves
Disposable dogmas
Believing the bullshit
Infected
Bleed from your hands
Dismally down to your knees
With your strength relinquished by you
We prey upon your bowing form
Day dreaming, idols deceiving
Enigmatic fixation
Age of piety
Mind expansion
A mystic cloud
Dead under the shroud
07 Equivalent Equilibrium (04:17)
bare my teeth in a fit of stability
cling to level ground
balancing ability
side with the positive
more and more progressively
scale the negative mountain
always seem to loose my foothold
got enough gear
to settle in for the long run
one false move
precautions elude
tumble in the mood
never seem to gain my foothold
inconsistantly faltering between the two pales
not much chance in regulating
all systems go, red alert behavior
humanistic insfictincts
the other's demonic
stranglehold and bold
up front, within the contact of
devils amongst angels
running' all through ya
despite strong intentions
bi-polar reflux
to the natural
knock for hilarious maleficence
fireless negotiating
war infernal, duo eternal
tumultuos disorder
equivalent equilibrium
drop zone efficiency
control rate zero
rotous in all aspects
unhealthy malaise
human demon
berserker balistically
beset the sane mind
Behemoth unleashed
orovaked, irreversable
a product from this perishable life
08 Back to the Worms (03:18)
imagine every living thing
forever accompanied
by an alter dimensional being
phantom pain brought on by
the wounding of each individual's
extracorporeal entity
in this violent day and age
we greatly fear their coming rage
what technology has done
forced apart what once was one
electropsychic and highly psychotic
as, unlike an aura, it thinks for itself
inseparable in schizoid existence
once inexorably linked with our own
relationship of symbiotic nature
unbeknownst to human half of dual creature
as the phantom empaths whose pain is intense
learn from the cold voice of experience
mass exodus in an invisible flood
externalization spills torrents of a blood
man has ended his three-dimensional term
they came from the worms
let them go back to the worms
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Other reviews
By Tepes
Drummer Flo Mounier demonstrates, as always, to be among the best (in my opinion THE best) in the field and further expands his technical skills.
The work is unusual but of high class. Innovation has a free path even at the expense of the thick darkness that characterized the works with Lord Worm.
