Eleven years. It’s been eleven years since Cryptopsy announced their eighth album.
Founded in 1988 as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, then Necrosis, then Gomorra, the Canadian band currently composed of Flo Mounier (drums, Arise from Worms, Tribe of Pazuzu, Vltimas, ex-Nader Sadek), Christian Donaldson (guitar, Mythosis), Matt McGachy (vocals, 3 Mile Scream) and Olivier Pinard (bass, Cattle Decapitation, Akurion, Vengeful, ex-Obvurt) unveil As Gomorrah Burns, on Nuclear Blast.
The album opens at full speed with Lascivious Undivine, which easily shows us that the band has lost none of its superb sound: jerky riffs, complex patterns, furious blasts and wild screams are skilfully blended, stomping us with rage. We face a few heavy energetic Old School parts before In Abeyance follows with the same unbridled violence, sometimes tinged with more dissonant, disquieting elements allowing us to breathe between two waves of fury. The four monsters follow up with Godless Deceiver, which suffocates us under incredibly heavy, groovy riffs that are slightly slower, but the speed is never far away to provide us with catchy passages. We also hear a strangely haunting solo, then Ill Ender immediately returns to the rhythmic tornado in which all instruments are brought to bear to create an explosive sound in all circumstances, even during the slower, choppier parts leading us to Flayed The Swine and its disturbing introduction. Pure brutality will of course resurface in a no-time, but the track keeps certain hypnotic dissonant elements that make it so charming, as on The Righteous Lost, which doesn’t hesitate to molest us with recurring cutting harmonics and devastating bass parts, but also with an epic solo. The sound darkens considerably on Obeisant and its anguishing heaviness, also tinting the more aggressive parts of the track with the usual raging howls, then the album comes to an end with Praise The Filth, the longest of the eight tracks, which is clearly not the least violent and doesn’t hesitate to couple fast, complex riffs with an apocalyptic final break.
Cryptopsy are still in top shape, and they deliver a highly devastating album with As Gomorrah Burns. Although a little short, their eighth opus lives up to our expectations and will do exactly what we’ve come to expect of it: savagely dismantle us.
95/100
