While still virtually unknown to the general public, Cryptopsy have been favorites in the death metal underground for 3 decades now, particularly since the release of their 1996 album None So Vile, their sophomore effort following 1994’s debut album Blasphemy Made Flesh. As such, due to the renown that None So Vile has received in the underground for decades, sometimes their debut gets unfairly overlooked. Fortunately, both have been reissued on both vinyl and CD by their current label (the venerable French label Season of Mist), which will hopefully allow listeners to reevaluate this one and rediscover its many charms.
Starting with the brutally titled “Defenestration” and not letting up for one second in its 10 songs over the course of 41 minutes of audio terror and with titles like “Open Face Surgery,” “Memories of Blood,” and the closer “Pathological Frolic,” you already know what you’re in for. This is death metal at its most extreme, technical, and brutal, with every shred of nuance being obliterated by the potent combination of original vocalist Lord Worm’s gory vocals, guitarists Jon Levasseur and Steve Thibault’s pounding and incredibly intricate riffs and solos, alongside the insane Les Claypool (whose Primus bandmate Larrly Lalonde started his career in death metal progenitors Possessed in the mid ‘80s) gone death metal bass work of Martin Fergusson and the maniacal drum work of Flo Mounier, the only member who’s in the current lineup and on every Cryptopsy record. The goal here is unrefined brutality, and boy, did they accomplish that.
Having been released during a period when death and thrash metal was being overtaken by Norwegian black metal for extremity and where others tried to blend in with the times by adding elements of groove, industrial, and so-called “alternative” metal to their repertoires with varying degrees of artistic success, this record alongside the later debuts of Nile (1998’s Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka) and Dying Fetus (1996’s Purification Through Violence) proved that this new group of technically-minded, brutal death metal practitioners had just as much artistic promise and potential to leave listeners breathless as the earlier waves of death metal had, giving a much needed dose of new life (or death lol) to the genre.
Now, as for this particular reissue, while this is hardly the first time Blasphemy Made Flesh has been reissued, what’s notable about this one is that not only was this one sourced from the original tapes (making it sounding better than many other similar reissues; thankfully this isn’t brickwalled at all, even on CD), it also includes not just the original album but a brand new, reworked medley of songs from the album as a bonus track (cleverly called “Blasphemy Made Fresh”) featuring the current lineup joined by the vocalists of Undeath (Alexander Sason), Shadow of Intent (Ben Duerr), Stabbing (Bridget Lynch) (Stabbing), Carcosa (Johnny Ciardulla) and Emasculator (Mallika Sundaramurthy), all bands inspired audibly by Cryptopsy and the original album.
Furthermore, the new medley features a solo by none other than renowned modern bluegrass guitarist Billy Strings, who is a huge Cryptopsy fan. If anything, it shows that musical appreciation has no genre limits, particularly in this day and age, and that the virtuosic bluegrass-infused guitar playing of Billy Strings and the virtuosic death metal of Cryptopsy have more in common than initially meets the ear.
In addition to all of that, the 2 CD version features a bonus disc with 10 songs chosen from a live set in Regina (the capital of the Saskatchewan province of Canada) back in 1995, part of a brutal 3-month tour the band embarked upon during that time. The disc even has a bonus hidden cover of Slayer’s “Raining Blood” on it, but I won’t spoil the fun by telling you where it is. Give it a listen!
