Cryptopsy - None So Vile

[Hammer of Might]

The hype and infamous standing of this album in the metal community made me anxious to get hold of it and listen to it. After taking in the brutal yet technical battery of this Canadian band's 3rd release (and last with vocalist Lord Worm), I have to say that I was blown away. The musicianship (the drum work of Flo Mounier in particular) is out of this world!

This album deserves all the reputation it has as arguably one of the most important death metal albums ever. It is brutal, insanely fast, but very catchy and technically impressive. Below I have summarised a few of the tracks...


Slit Your Guts – This is currently my favourite track on the album. It is relentlessly fast and aggressive, but this does not mean to say that it is just noise. The vocals on this entire album are an acquired taste (even for a fan of the genre), but I personally think they fit well. What I most love about this track I think is the speed at which it is delivered, and yet the multitude of different sections it has. Amazing!

Phobophile – A soothing piano and bass intro gives way to another battery of mind-warping death metal, with a central riff that I really like. Although to be honest they can barely be understood, the lyrics for this track are particularly amusing - tongue in cheek gore aplenty! Overall a very intense and complex song.

Orgiastic disembowelment – Despite the amusing title, the theme of this track seems to be more a reflection on religion than another gore-fest. It is very groovy in places, and it is very driven (as is the whole album) by Flo Mounier on the drums. His speed and precision, from the point of view of a drummer, is staggering and inspirational, and he complements the speeding guitars very well. This is the closing track of the album which brings to an end a relentless collection of intense and completely brilliant death metal!


A spoken outro at the end of the last track sums it all up really:

"That's it. Go ahead and run. Run home and cry to momma!"

After you've finished listening to this masterpiece, you'll will want to run home to your mum, even if it's to thank her for bringing you into this world - so you could hear this album!

 

[anonymousnick2001]

I just don't like Lord Worm's vox, so the album falls under the two newer ones for me.

I definitely agree with the album's importance, and a lot of the riffs are really catchy. Phobophile's intro is great...

 

[Krilons Resa]

FUCKIN A' !

 

[Hammer of Might]

So was that a good review?

 

[anonymousnick2001]

Yea.

 

[Ultimate_Symphony]

Good job, more so considering you're a newbie to death metal

 

[Hammer of Might]

Indeed!

 

[Hammer of Might]

By the way, (shameless plug...) this is just one of the reviews you can see at my personal review site

See my sig...

 

[SculptedCold]

Tis so kewl how you've gotten into good death metal so quickly..........

You remind me of me! hehehe =P

 

[Hammer of Might]

Well I went quite quickly from melodic death metal to "good" death metal! haha

I still enjoy both, as well as various other styles of metal. I'm glad I found this area in particular though!

\m/

 

[Rottuated]

Excellent review, and I totally agree. It takes awhile to adapt to Lord Worms vocals if you're not into the extream stuff off the bat. Fucking brutal album, and I love it. Cryptopsy are one of my favorite bands, they have almost everything you could want in a death metal band: speed, heaviness, technicality, and sometimes melody.

 

[anonymousnick2001]

Naw, I always thought his vocals sucked.

 

[Demiurge]

First the production; it's shrill, ragged, and harsh. Simply terrible, especially for a brutal death album requiring dense production. The vocals of Lord Worm are mediocre, occasionally he lets loose an interesting sound but mostly just growls and grunts in a rather generic fashion. There's an alarming amount of slap bass present here, quite irritating. The song structure is.....wait, there isn't any song structure. There are plenty of tempo changes and shifts in the trem-riffing but it all adds up to a jumbled, amorphous mess with absolutely no direction. Worst of all are the most piercing treble spikes one can produce without an ice pick and a chalkboard. Drumming is capable, but overrated. The majority of it is the usual blast-fill. Simply aural torture.

There is an alternative review.

 

[SculptedCold]

...and it's exact sort we've read before by those identical to you. Always the same words, always the same technical complaints. I never fail to be amused by the average 'elitist's view of None So Vile. =)

Granted, there's plenty of truth to it of course. The drumming is competent but definately not deserving of all the 'OMG FLO = GOD *SPUNK*' statements, Lord Worm is, although unique, quite monotonous, the song structures and time changes are pretty much random.....but still, despite that, I think it's a good record. Like many cases of good music in my view, it's worth much more than the sum of it's technical parts. Simply the way it sounds has it's own almost phenomenological qualia that justifies it all, and it's that feeling that is missed with technically critical reviews like yours. And yet....many 'elitist' types do mention this qualia (albeit in suitably fancy adjectives), but only when it suits their purposes it seems. There, I suppose, is where the fallacy of subjective perspective rears it's ugly head; the special 'feeling' quality that can speak to some and not to others is something subjective and beyond technical critique. I expect you'd argue that it's just the way music is composed, but of course, it's more than that; it has to be, otherwise we'd all like the exact same music....and neither is it just something being melodic, catchy or hook-laden that makes it appealing, otherwise you'd have to turn against many black metal acts that are held dear.....

Cryptopsy - None So Vile. Technically proficient, compositionally nonexistent. But....the RIFFS man! The RIFFS!.

 

[Demiurge]

Well, yeah. It's a copy of a review I wrote elsewhere with a few words edited.

Smart people hate NSV and bad music, dumbasses often like both.

My "review" wasn't really a review. Just more of the unpopular truth.

Different music is good for different aesthetic reasons, quality composition is the link.

 

[Naggamanteh]

Dumbasses dislike Cryptopsy.

 

[no country for old wainds]

I can't actually hear the appeal of None so Vile at all. I don't find the riffs too interesting.

 

[anonymousnick2001]

Same here. But Demiurge criticized it for all the wrong reasons. Slap bass is awesome. And he crticized the lack of song structure, right after insulting Death's tSOP for having a circular one. It's like he doesn't even listen to the music at all...

Whisper Supremacy is fuckin' awesome, though.

 

[Planetary Eulogy]

The original, off the cuff PE review of None So Vile:

Forged from the worst elements of NYDM via the diseased minds of the would-be-if-they-could-be French Canadian avant-garde and unleashed without thought or mercy upon an unsuspecting world, None So Vile is one of those records counted among the classics by those who enjoy migraines. Hideously dissonant and jarringly atonal, mixed raw and rusty (but with brain piercing treble spikes to ensure the onset of Excedrin Headache No. 666). The usual assortment of blindingly fast, grating tremolo riffs and "technical" blast and fill drumming over amorphous structures replete with sudden (and pointless) tempo and riff changes inserted (one must assume) to remind you that these are skilled players. The expected generic vomitvox rears its head. Occasional reversions to a simple, midpaced power chord chug serve (I guess) as "payoff" for sitting through the blasting (but really, who needs to wait for such "payoff" so long as From Beyond is still available?). Oh, and lots of slap bass. Assholes love slap bass. Apparently, assholes also love this band. Like Cryptopsy, assholes fucking suck.

--------------------------------

The problem with the album structurally isn't so much a lack of structure as a lack of coherence within the structural framework of the songs. Most of them sound like a series of riffs selected at random and then slapped together until a three to four minute "song" is constructed. Riff placement isn't logical, nor is it calculated for effect. For the most part, it seems that the band just changed riffs every 20 seconds because they felt it was expected.

 

[anonymousnick2001]

The problem with the album structurally isn't so much a lack of structure as a lack of coherence within the structural framework of the songs. Most of them sound like a series of riffs selected at random and then slapped together until a three to four minute "song" is constructed. Riff placement isn't logical, nor is it calculated for effect. For the most part, it seems that the band just changed riffs every 20 seconds because they felt it was expected.

This, you realize, is all assumption and speculation, right? If you hear the songs performed live, you'll see that that the band and the fans know exactly what's going on in the music. It was just composed in a random style, but there is a flow. Kind of like Opeth's Orchid album.