“Untruthfulness has you contained within my hive.”
Montréal Brutal Technical Death godfathers Cryptopsy return with An Insatiable Violence, which sees the Canadian metal mainstays improve upon the blueprint lain down by their 2023 album, As Gomorrah Burns.
With their second full-length album since As Gomorrah Burns marked the end of an 11-year dry spell in terms of full-length album output (unless you include the combined two Tome EPs, which sport 4 tracks each), Cryptopsy have scarcely been interested in not pushing the envelope throughout their career – and An Insatiable Violence is no different. As well as more directly intense firsts, such as some of the band’s fastest passages yet and even a few gravity blasts from virtuoso drummer and sole original member Flo Mounier, the band have clearly noted criticisms of As Gomorrah Burns and actively improved upon them whilst continuing to explore the inmost and extremes of the new Cryptopsy.
Over the years, and particularly since 2008’s The Unspoken King, Cryptopsy have been criticised by metal snobs around the world for beginning to introduce elements of deathcore into their sound. To me, however, this has not negatively impacted the band’s output at all and is purely the band continuously evolving their sound and continuing to push that envelope as they have always done – neither of which are easy to pull off within a genre so frequently elitist as death metal. To me, Cryptopsy have never lost what made both None So Vile and Blasphemy Made Flesh staples of the broader genre, but taken those foundations and built upon them.
With that said, An Insatiable Violence marks a point in Cryptopsy’s discographic lore wherein they have perfectly managed to blend the old with the new. As you might expect, there are more than enough typically-Cryptopsy crazy, blastbeat-driven sporadic and dissonant guitars, which are pared effectively with low, crushingly heavy and gurn-worthy chug-slowdown sections.
Vocalist Matt McGachy channels Lord Worm in his unintelligibly barked delivery often throughout this album, perhaps thanks in part to his full false-chord gutturals, which he debuted on As Gomorrah Burns but has clearly only continued to perfect since. Another vocalist from Cryptopsy’s storied past makes a guest appearance on penultimate track “Embrace the Nihility”, that being none other than Lord Worm successor Mike DiSalvo himself. Though brief, appears in order to DiSalvo end the song by sort of interpolating the same transition to a low spoken tone as heard at the end of the song “…and Then it Passes” as a sort of ode to his era fronting the band.
The production may just be the best of Cryptopsy’s entire career so far, with walls of phenomenal, snarling guitar tone (accredit to DSPs these days, I suspect), drums which, despite obviously and inevitably making use of triggers, do not lack life at all, and similarly a rather dense, tight, and dry mix overall is well-handled, never feeling claustrophobic, messy, or anything less than up-to-scratch with modern metal production standards – but never too sterile, either, allowing the soul of None So Vile-era Cryptopsy to shine through alongside the spirit of the band today.
Perhaps nowhere is that None So Vile-era so vividly audible as track 4, “Fools Last Acclaim”, which I noted with slightly rougher production could easily have been a track from None So Vile itself, between the nature of the mind-blowingly sporadic and technical passages and incredibly brutal, Dying Fetus-esquechugsection which particularly reeked of the band’s early years, leaning more into the brutal death metal label.
Fans of Cryptopsy’s sometimes strange lyrics that break away from the typical death metal subject matter of death and the devil in favour of truly dark reflections of reality won’t be disappointed here either, with the album opening with “The Nimis Adoration”, a song that underscores the dark nature of Mukbang videos:
“The impressive mounds of sustenance/Upon which I must feast/Is far too much for any mortal beast/Sweat drips/Hands quake/As I cry”.
Cryptopsy have always known that there is seldom more twisted than the real world can be, but such has particularly become the case in our day-to-day lives in recent years. The lyrics throughout An Insatiable Violence acknowledge this and take aim at various corners of the human condition for intense literary dissection. Always rife for criticism for its perceived effects on various facets of modern society, “Our Great Deception” takes aim at social media:
“This endless abyss of tantalizing choices/We continue to peruse with silent voices/Longing for connections to fill the void/Fostered time and time again”,
Whereas “Until There’s Nothing Left” appears to describe the experience of a revenge porn victim as told from the perspective of the aggressor:
“I cut the strings and watch you fall/I jeer as panic takes over/I giggle as you start to bawl […] I skim through bare skinned images of you in weird poses I marvel at how easily I got you to spread open”.
The title of the album itself is another critique of social media; more specifically, our symbiotic relationship with social media. According to McGachy, the title is of oneiric origin, coming to following in a dream he had in late 2023 about some who spends every day of their life tinkering with a machine that they then willingly strap themselves into every night in order to be tortured by – see the parallels?
Whilst my feelings toward An Insatiable Violence are overwhelmingly positive, I will say that by about track 7, the penultimate track, things do begin to get a little repetitive, but track 8 explores a little more of the brutal than the extreme, meaning it’s easier to bob your head along to and therefore pulls you back in a bit, and the big, melodic finish á-la Cattle Decapitation is a great touch and the perfect way to end the album.
To conclude, An Insatiable Violence marks but the second step down the path death metal staples Cryptopsy have carved out for themselves in the sonic renascence they have embarked upon since their return with previous album As Gomorrah Burns. In many ways, the two albums are very much related, though there is no denying at all that An Insatiable Violence is the better of the two in many ways.
It is good to see another old school death metal band who dominated the early days of the scene unafraid to adapt their sound a little, even some 33 years into their career. Where Cannibal Corpse have upgraded their amps and lowered their tunings since the days of Eaten Back to Life and received nothing but praise, Cryptopsy have unfortunately always been criticised for bolder evolutions to their sound – but they have always powered through. An Insatiable Violence, to me, is an amalgamation of what the band have been building towards for years, and there is no denying that the results are fantastic. Just as heavy and perhaps even slightly more technical than the beloved Lord Worm era, but with production that balances the band’s OSDM roots with their budding deathcore influences, An Insatiable Violence defines Cryptopsy today as much as None So Vile defined them in 1996.
8/10
An Insatiable Violence releases on June 20, 2025, via Season of Mist and can be pre-ordered here.