Crypticus
Dedicated To The Impure
6.2
This isn’t quite what I expected. When one thinks of Razorback Records, the montage of images summoned usually includes gore, blastbeats, more blastbeats, lyrics about gore, burping, sarcasm, horror movies, alliteration, blastbeats, and…well, you get the point. Shit like Fuck…I’m Dead, Ghoul and Gruesome Stuff Relish has been the order of the day for Razorback for pretty much the duration of the label’s existence, and the brand name has come to imply a very, very specific sound. There are some recent signs that Billy and Jill are branching out ever-so-slightly, though; the new Coffins album, for example, is just as much doom as it is death, and there’s nary a grind moment to be had on it. Crypticus isn’t nearly as much of a departure as said release, and Dedicated to the Impure contains pretty much all of the above Razorback staples. Simultaneously, it’s a distinctly more controlled and deliberate album than the majority of the Razorback catalogue, and as such it’s noteworthy.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it especially interesting. Crypticus is, as far as I can tell, the product of one Patrick Bruss, who has been cranking out albums steadily for about nine years. Dedicated to the Impure is composed of twelve short bursts of what Bruss describes as “deathgrind,” though the music to be had here is almost entirely death metal. The only real grindcore mainstay that Crypticus employs is the processed uber-guttural burp vocal style; otherwise the proceedings here are an exercise in chunky, churning death riffage. The material culls equally from the early Stockholm greats and their contemporaneous American counterparts, particularly evoking the mighty Autopsy. Despite Crypticus’s less absurd musical paradigm, Bruss maintains the signature Razorback predilection for comedy and hardly takes his project too seriously.
It’s competent and all, but it’s not a whole lot more than that (and this is from a guy who fucking loves Autopsy). While Dedicated to the Impure is certainly more focused and less deliberately ridiculous than the average Razorback act, it’s still ultimately another middle-of-the-road death metal rehash. There isn’t much to be said about it that hasn’t been said of a million like-minded discs over the past ten or fifteen years, and those of you who are really curious about my feelings on the matter (for whatever reason) can take a gander at my recent Sudden Death review. Grind fanatics will probably buy this just by virtue of its connection with Razorback, but the average metalhead need not bother.
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