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Rating:
What I am about to review is one of the most discussed and contested albums of the past year in the metal scene. Therefore, it will be difficult to please everyone; in fact, I believe most of you will disagree with me.
The album was released in 2005, after exactly five years of inactivity of the band (if you don't count the 2003 Live): after such a long period of absence, some expected a big comeback while others foresaw a major disappointment. In particular, the departure of founding guitarist Jonhatan Levasseur and the return to the microphone of Lord Worm, whose singing is much more anchored to the genre's canons than that of his predecessor Mike Di Salvo, had raised quite a few doubts.
Already on the first listen, you can notice that the sound has changed again and the album is very different from the last “…And Then You’ll Beg”. Incredible but true, the skill of the already monstrous drummer has further improved. He manages to sustain truly inhuman tempos, enlivened by a unique personality and originality: not just the classic Blast Beats, but much more is what this drummer, whose technical abilities have been matched by few, offers us. The guitarist who remained after Levasseur's departure proves to be not only very capable and up to the group's standards but also a precise and technically excellent performer: however, in the next work, he will face the most difficult test, which is composition (the guitar parts for “Once Was Not” were already written by the departed guitarist). It's impossible not to mention the bassist, one of the few players of this instrument who manages to stand out with wonderful breaks in a tightly knit genre like Brutal Death. But the most contested point of the entire CD is the return of the old singer: what can I say, certainly his voice is no longer what it was ten years ago (I would like to point out to the more "ruthless" that he is now forty) and that the extraordinary performance of “None So Vile” is now a distant thing. However, his growls are still good, and if there is anything to blame him for, it's his screaming, which is unconvincing and evidently tired.
The eleven songs that make up this album are varied and incredibly intricate: the guitar riffs intersect with each other and with the bass lines, forming a dense and schizophrenic web, exacerbated by the insanely fast drumming and the illogical tempos I mentioned earlier. It can be said that the new sound coined by the band in this album is a blend between the detached and lucid madness of the two albums under Di Salvo and the dark and enveloping feeling of the early LPs “Blasphemy Made Flesh” and “None So Vile”: however, it lacks the rarified atmospheres of the more recent works and the morbid charm of the past ones. In short, despite reality, it seems like a somewhat immature band, still indecisive about the path to follow, influenced by the purest and most uncompromising Brutal, which they carry forward in its essential lines, but also deeply attracted by various experimental ventures: hence the reason for the typically jazz pieces and others performed with acoustic guitar that they insert in the middle of the songs on this CD (not to mention the presence of two instrumental pieces with an Eastern European flavor, a complete novelty for the Canadian band).
A note of merit goes to the lyrics, a sort of return to the origins for impact and the emotions they evoke, but finally adapted to serious themes and outside the clichés of the genre. The production proves once again to be at the height of these guys' talents: clean but still not too empty or inadequate for a work of this musical genre.
What I find lacking in this CD is the mood, which presents a profound rift between the lyrics and the music: it only takes listening to their previous (master)works to understand that while the instrumentalists are still projected, compositionally and attitudinally, into the experimentations prior to Lord Worm's "homecoming," the latter is more oriented towards the uncompromising Brutal, of which he was a standard-bearer.
I believe Cryptopsy will have to overcome these internal discrepancies if they want to regain the favor of all their fans and turn their proposal into not just a good idea, but a complete and perfect work as in the past.
As far as I'm concerned, I consider “Once Was Not” an excellent effort far from disappointing, which highlights the above-average abilities of this group, once again placing them at the top of the Brutal Death scene. The meticulous composition, exquisite technique, and yet another evolution earn this CD the highest marks; however, while a neophyte fan will be amazed and delighted, veteran fans will have the right and duty to desire more.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 Carrionshine (03:22)
After the fire, their bodies at rest
Beyond mere blood, beyond mere breath:
Their terror summons the vapours of fright
A mating call to things of the night
The things they'll become after they die
Have called to us before their time:
The dark horse of dreams has brought them here
To this Ur-Place that feeds on fear
Where the only light comes from their bones
That glow, now: all their flesh is gone
(A) Voice between rivers
Sings (the) truth that destroys
Then it laughs like a dog
(The) Voice between worlds
Has existence to void
And it dwells in their bones
�That which was drawn in sand for me
By the man of blood
Whose hand never ends
Heralds all mortality
And he-who-waits-beneath-the-scream�
Oh, to be possessed of carrionshine
To dream past the limits of carcasskind
The prayer goes:
�Unite to thee thy bones - What appertains to thee is complete�
05 The Curse of the Great (05:21)
Das ist der fluch der mÃ'�chtigen
Let us settle with swords
The affairs of men:
Violence is the answer:
Â'�Sis im blutÂ'�... Eisblut!
In this soiled world
We see aspects of damnation
On the faces of the killed
Instead of gratitude
This psychology may seem
A bit baroque at first
But what a boon it be
When the demons come
With time and telling, memory dulls
Of rotting boys with empty skulls:
All sons of ares, sons of mars
Whose flesh be worms, whose souls be stars
Myriads of combat corpses
The eggshell skeletons of men
Debris over which weep
Their stricken families:
Parents, wives and children
Their heroic children
Their heroic sufferings
Do strengthen hearts
And moisten eyes
Know ye not (Have ye forgotten?)
Your place in the earth?
We know (as we've always known)
(That) there can be no place
For such as ye
Upon our blameless, benighted earth
The breath of the dead
Fills the stagnant breeze:
Now, the world is perfect
(And) those left behind still weep
(And) should the question of terror arise
We'll draw our hate down from the skies
We live beneath a carcass moon
That makes a horror of all days
For on this battlefield
Even the wicked get worse than they deserve
Â'�But then, it is the curse of the great
To have to walk over the corpses. Â'�
Â'�Es war schon immer der fluch der mÃ'�chtigen
Ã'�ber leichen schreiten zu mÃ'�ssen. Â'�
With our deeds of carnage
We hail bloodshed our immortal king
07 Keeping the Cadaver Dogs Busy (05:58)
We who end lives with a wink and a smile
And a song in our hearts and a twinkling eye
Do so with a noble purpose in mind:
To thin out the rabble of humankind
We are never where you think
We'll be
The shadow underneath your sink
Our teeth into
Your fragile flesh
Is ours to do with as we
«Please! Oh, help me!»
Here come the cadaver dogs:
They'll find where the dead girl lies:
Unlike us, they'll be soft with her
Like she were made of eyes
«Street musician found strangled
In the trunk of a car»
«Gutted vagrant found hanging
From a tree in a park»
«Naked infant found frozen
On some steps leading down»
«Headless foetus found rotting
On the roof of a house»
Recycle the body pits
And human cluster dumps
Filled with the burnt, the stabbed
And the lucky machinegunned
There are no victims
Just landfill statistics
Where overpopulation threatens us all:
«Disordered thinking:»
Is that what they call it?
So, our culling (of) the herd has left you appalled?
(Or,) see it as a self-defense
If no other way:
Encroaching humans number our days:
Probe the young for signs
To no effect:
Serial killing's not a birth defect
Here come the cadaver dogs:
They'll find where the dead man lies:
Unlike us, they'll be soft with him
Like he were thinning ice
08 Angelskingarden (07:07)
Touched by Jeqon
The inciter
Well-rounded womanflesh
Doth tempt
The angels of the watch
To sin
And their sons are
Nephilim
Thrice blessed are we in his garden
We have the world, our health, our kin:
As we «go forth and multiply»
We take form each other's skin
Endogamy: the choice of millions
In (all their) elemental ugliness:
In the echoes of repetition
Imperfection sires itself
Nothing in life
Has any business being perfect:
It's an affront
To anyone with good taste
Choice is divine
So choose family over strangers:
Why trouble the waters
Of the gene pool for a mate?
Carbon Vessel
Carbon content
Carbon copy
...Carbonize...
Like a lump between two surgeons
Man quivers 'twixt desire and need:
The law is the will, and we've chosen
The kingdom of which we would be
In filial sect
We are genesis incarnate:
In our faces
We see manifest destiny
(and) leave nothing alive
With thoughts of heaven come deeds of flesh:
We'd look once more upon his holy visage
And our children whom we've known and wed
(are) our means to recreate his image
In lurking fear of his displeasure
After dark, between their cries
In the eye of the beholder:
This is where beauty dies
11 Endless Cemetery (05:20)
[Lord Worm]
Beneath a shawl of midnight silence
A howling blackness
Where all is remade in necromorphosis
Asleep in human remains
Worn from the stones
Elegiac words
Recounting hopes
And forgotten lives
For beneath them lies
The dust of humans
The dust of dreams
Oh! The dust...
A coach drawn by the blackest steeds
As befits those who've passed from life
Will bring you to where swarm the specters
Of man's best-loved funerals
The laws of flesh are here repealed:
Vigor mortis is now on the way
So count the black beads of your sorrow
While you stammer your frightened prayers
Readjust your vision, see the warp in the shadows...
There's something wrong with the dark:
Something that thrives on wretchedness and sorrow
And makes the darkness crawl
Rain-swelled clouds
Blot out the sun
Damned nor'easter
Chilling the dark
Branches, sticks
Thistles, thorns
Feathers, fur
Mud and bones...
Dying ground
A lifeless thing of earthen heath
Seeing soil from beneath
Knows the need to summon flesh
To its maw
Cold blue lips frame (a) yard-wide grin
That calls to flesh, to let it in
And thus indulge its yearning
Come the unDawn
Roam the endless cemetery of what once was
(where) the Allfeeling is never truly gone
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