Once Was Not

In going back through this dazzlingly technical era of Cryptopsy, one thing that’s Claritin clear is that Cryptopsy were never willing to settle nor rest on their laurels. None so Vile is a great album? Great – let’s go harder and faster! Whisper Supremacy messed with time signatures and rapid-fire sledgehammer riffs? Fuck it, let’s play even faster and meaner, and with even more time signature changes! Who needs those… groove thingies anyway? But now what? How much harder and faster can you play it? Well, here on Once Was Not, Cryptopsy dodges the question and just messes around with the very nature of death metal itself!

On one end, you get the None So Vile-esque “Carrionshine”. The way the mid-paced and fast explosive riffs wrap around one another create this real push and pull that simultaneously feels familiar yet keeps you on your toes. At its core, it’s high-impact death metal that sounds like something left on the cutting room floor of those None So Vile recording sessions. Really, the only thing that’d be different from this hypothetical version and the one we got here is Flo’s increasingly precise and technical drumming over the years. Oh, he’s still blasting away at his drum kit like it owes him money, but those well-timed slower bits definitely showcase that keen ear for pumped up kicks. A lot of moving pieces that add thump to the hard-hitting riffs Auburn’s got going on there. Be it fast or slow, Flo’s adding a lot of oomph to what the guitar’s throwing out there. It’s not to say that the songs “Carrionshine” are sandwiched between are bad examples – “In the Kingdom Where Everything Dies” kicks off the album by messing a bit more with the push-pull between mid-paced and fast-paced bits in a less conventional matter, and “Adeste Infidelis” centers around that one explosive part a minute in whilst its dynamic riffing wraps back around to a more overarching rhythm.

On the other end… yeah, Once Was Not does like to bounce around different rhythms quite a bit, and it’s only through about two or three repetitions of a song’s main rhythms that it eeks out some kind of overarching melody. Meanwhile, songs like “Keeping the Cadaver Dogs Busy” and “Angelskingarden” take more after Whisper Supremacy in how it bobs and weaves between different motifs. We’re talking about the usage of jazzy intros, epic symphonic moments, those clean banjo-esque guitar bits, some creepy Altars of Madness-like keys and just some generally cool/brutal guitar and drum bits. “Angelskingarden” does go for more epic riffing to go with its heavier usage of symphonics, and its climactic solo certainly helps to give it that flair. But it’s more like it cycles through whatever motifs give it those flavorings. That’s basically what a lot of the album does. There’s a central thing like a big moment to build around, or a general mood they want to build upon. Cryptopsy was already balls deep in some jazzy shit by this point and Once Was Not definitely reaches that apex as it just seems like a collection of moments vaguely tied together by a central riff or motif they used like once in the track. You know those movies that seem incomprehensible until you think about it, then watch it again with the knowledge you’ve attained from that first viewing and you end up getting it, and then end up digging it more as a result? That’s basically this album in a nutshell…

But here’s the kicker – for all the glitz that glamors, the music on Once Was Not is ultimately hit or miss.

“Adeste Infidelis” and “Infinite Cemetery” are pretty sicks songs and “The Pestilence that Walketh the Darkness” is a genuine bonafide classic. It’s one thing to expertly build a song around that one explosive moment and maintain that fire and fury at different paces; it’s one thing to have winding, harrowing riffs that worm their way into your conscious; it’s another to be “The Pestilence that Walketh the Darkness”. Seriously, kicking a song off with fuzzy riffing while Lord Worm reads Psalm 91: 5-8 before it kicks into None So Vile styled hyperdrive is precisely what they wanted to achieve with the opening trio on this album. It has those jazzy motifs and Flo’s hyper-technical drumming, but there’s more to it. Its moody intro and Bible Verse read give off the feeling of being sucked into the darkness before it suffocates you via the blasting and hyperspeed riffing. The arrangement is so that the cloudy riffs and then blazing fast follow-up stick to your head. Basically, on top of its technical composition is one that’s got strong hooks that ultimately makes it quite memorable. Something that a good amount of this album lacks.

It’s like they got the right ideas for how the song should be structured and how it should floor the listener, but the actual music itself is just there to accentuate those big reveals or whatever. It’s like you get this cool moment or this intriguing experimental moment, or even that one moment where either Auburn or Langlois are letting it rip, but what tie them together come across like first drafts. Like, the first things they could think of to bridge the moments together into songs. If they bridge them together, anyway. Like, that riff’s lacking that necessary punch or this hook’s quite blunt and not catching much. It sucks to say because it really seems like they got this ambitious death metal thing down until you realize how just kinda there a fair chunk of the music here is. Definitely doesn’t help that the dry and hoarse production robs the riffs of a fair bit of power.

So yeah, gonna chalk Once Was Not up as a slight bit of a mixed bag of jellybeans. Good but flawed. Mainly since the more experimental moments do make for some potentially interesting music and the structuring does open them up to being some truly fascinating tracks. But a few too many of those moments where they’re tripping over themselves trying to go from moment to moment, just not entirely sure of how to make that transition does lessen the impact of the songs on the whole. The more successful joints are the three that sound the most like you’d expect Cryptopsy to sound – more specifically, if the windowdressing and general theatrics of the Mike DiSalvo albums had the melodic sensibilities of the first two Lord Worm albums. But at the same time, its overall ambition results in a multitude of songs with character. The cool moments are cool enough to give the songs life, even if the songs in full aren’t all there. It’s weird, but you wanna know something? It is what it is.