None So Vile

Cryptopsy is generally well known for being one of the early pioneers of technical/brutal death metal. In most technical death metal, there is a plague of random sweep solos without any purpose, and in most brutal death metal, there is a lack of originality. Cryptopsy has the best of both worlds here, as it has the complex song structures of technical death metal, along with the intensity and aggression of brutal death metal.

My main highlight on None So Vile is the guitar. When Jon recorded this, he really knew what he was doing. The tone is nice and thick, being played in B standard. As a guitar player, I consider guitarists who play in forms of standard to have more talent than those who play in drops, which I guess contributes to my love of the guitar on this album. The riffing on Graves of the Fathers is absolutely brilliant, a complete classic.

Coming in on second is Flo’s drumming. As we all know, the drums are the most important instrument in setting the mood of a song. Flo’s aggressive beats and tempos are simply amazing. A lot of brutal and technical death metal drummers do nothing but blasturbating for an entire album(*Cough*Fleshgod Apocalypse*Cough*), but Flo actually knows what he’s doing, and while that does obviously include blast beats, he makes them his own, instead of just another technical death metal blasturbathon. And on top of his originality, he’s a boss at double-bass techniques.

My third highlight is the bass. I love the twang that comes before the breakdown on Slit your Guts. It seems like in a lot of music, not only metal, the bass is nothing but a noise in the background, doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the sound of the song. But in this album, the bass plays a major roll, making it something special.

And that leaves fourth place. The vocals. Don’t get me wrong, Lord Worm is amazing, but I really wish I could have heard the lyrics in the songs. I know only a little naive kid comes to a death metal album hoping to hear lyrics, but I think he could have pronounced a lot better. He has great tone, great pitch, just no pronunciation. But other than that, this album is flawless!

In conclusion, this album is well worth your money. I can only imagine how amazing it would have been to see these songs live when they were first released, it would have been one crazy pit! Sadly, we can’t mosh to this album in it’s original form anymore, but still, we can buy it! So that’s what you should do, go buy it!