CRYPTIC SHIFT – visitations from enceladus / pleasure of plasma DCD

CD2 (Pleasure of Plasma) comprises all guitar and bass lead breaks from the album, isolated

One of the metal underground’s best-kept secrets, CRYPTIC SHIFT hail from Leeds, England and formed in 2014. Over a steady stream of EPs, splits, and digital singles, the band patiently perfected their craft, evolving from more modestly stated thrash metal to cosmic, tech-minded deathrash by 2016’s Beyond the Celestial Realms. Not for nothing was that EP named as such: here, CRYPTIC SHIFT began plotting their trip to space…or at the least the hinterlands of the death metal imagination.

And at long last, CRYPTIC SHIFT have truly blasted off into the outer stratosphere with their long-awaited debut album, Visitations From Enceladus. Also fortuitously titled, the band’s full-length debut is indeed some strange visitation from unexpected (and unexplored) locales, a veritable transmission of alien origin. Dauntingly, the album begins with the 26-minute “Moonbelt Immolator,” itself colorfully titled, challenging the listener’s perceptions right from the start. But those ready to explore the furthest, most (moon)bent reaches of death metal will soon be rewarded with a journey like no other; CRYPTIC SHIFT subsequently slice and sluice their a whole host of harrowing, horrific shapes, yet always with an uncanny knack for hooks. Similarly – and as vividly displayed by that opening, side-long epic – this quartet of cosmonauts deftly downshift into eerily placid moments of repose, their shimmering vapor trails of melody twisting with serpentine delight, all before building again into torrents of thrashing-like-a-maniac DEATH METAL gone completely off the rails. But CRYPTIC SHIFT’s execution is tight beyond belief: truly, this is a band of master musicians and craftsmen, and thankfully, they’ve put those chops in the service of the song – and four equally astounding ones that amount to an amazingly kaleidoscopic work.

References to the legendary likes of Athiest, Gorguts, Cynic, and especially later Death and Pestilence are understandable, of course, but CRYPTIC SHIFT have a gnarled ‘n’ gnarling aspect that puts them closer to such cults as DBC, The Chasm, Timeghoul, Canada’s Martyr, and especially Nocturnus. All we can do is strongly suggesting booking an excursion aboard their mothership NOW, and begin experiencing fully these Visitations From Enceladus!

Tracks:

1. CD1: Moonbelt Immolator
2. (Petrified in the) Hypogean Gaol
3. The Arctic Chasm
4. Planetary Hypnosis
5. CD2: Unworldly Fog Clearing From Exhaust Tubes
6. Spherical Alignment
7. Slipstream Through Crevasses In The Lithospheric Nimbus Smog
8. A Celestial Dance Through The Gas Giant’s Spewing Ichor
9. Sputtering Exhaust Fumes Clinging To The Engine Nexus Spark
10. Secluded Howling Of A Synchronous Awakening
11. Rolling Hills Of Nebula
12. Manifested Through The Shores Of Time
13. A Ceremony Of Churning Gravity-Flux In The Spatio-Temporal Continuum
14. Scoured Mutation Seekers
15. Altered Colliding Parallels
16. The Mirror
17. Illumed In Cimmerian Shade
18. Fog In A Vacuous Vacuum
19. Distortional Labyrinth Traversal
20. Moonbelt Immolator I
21. Moonbelt Immolator II
22. Moonbelt Immolator III
23. Orbital Debris
24. Hovering Undescribable Thing
25. Spurned Immortality Mythos I
26. A Riposte Of Crepuscular Lunar Presence
27. Tumultuous Meridian Occurrence
28. Spurned Immortality Mythos II
29. Pinging Astrolabes Quantizing Approach Vectors
30. Analogue Displays Flicker In The Cryptical Beams Of Another Dimension
31. At The Passageways Of Asa’lluahi
32. Spherulites And Regmaglypts Form Upon The Urns As They Become Unstable In The Presence Of Non-Stygian Construct
33. Astronomical Die-Mensionomial Phenomenon
34. Leeching Space-Time From Black-Holes
35. Tethered Sepulchres Collapsing In Digital

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Progressive Metal

Label: Blood Harvest

Erscheinungsjahr: 2021

Künstler: CRYPTIC SHIFT

Format: CD

EAN: –

GPSR Information:
Manufacturer:
Blood Harvest Records
Box 2014, 22002 Lund, Sweden
mailorder(at)bloodharvest.se