Septical Anaesthesia

Kryptor were pioneers on the Czech field alongside Debustrol, Torr and Arakain as these four outfits brought thrash to their homeland in the late-80’s each in their own way, our friends here having chosen the more aggressive, bashing, proto-death prone side of the genre as evident from the album reviewed here.

In terms of aggression Kryptor were ahead of any other practitioner from the small republic as the melee is pretty much relentless “Neznamy Vojin” bringing memories of “atrocities” like Morbid Saint’s “Spectrum of Death”, Sacrifice’s “Torment in Fire”, and Messiah’s “Hymns of Abramelin”, also with the help of the intimidating semi-declamatory deathy vocals. The musicianship isn’t on a very high level, and in this train of thought the guys are behind the other three mentioned acts. Not that this is an impediment for them to shatter the listener’s world with their naïve, but pretty intense barrage which acquires covert hardcore-ish flavour on the more optimistic “Klasterni Tajemstvi”. “Markyz de Sade” is a cool more comprehensive thrasher with lively rolling guitars, but “Lepra” is another less restrained cut with both aggressive and intriguing moments fighting for domination, the “tussle” won by the former due to the over-the-top brutality that takes over at some stage.

A more serious song-writing arrives with the 2-part “Genocida” the band pouring more diversity into the no-bars-held approach changing the riff-patterns more frequently, also adding a few really nice melodic lead sections. Mentioning melody, it comes amply provided on the surprisingly game-changing “Rychlost Vitezi” which switches onto uplifting speed metal, slightly influencing “Justicni Omyl”, a more aggressive thrash/proto-deathy offering graced by a couple of intriguing psychedelic shades and more technical pirouettes recalling their compatriots Assesor. A really stylish turn of events which puts the second half on a higher pedestal regardless of the short joke track “Fuck Off (part A)” which still serves curious quirky tunes and less ordinary nervy riff-patterns.

A contrasting showing as a whole the guys keeping their more interesting arsenal for later, almost succeeding in finding the balance between the two sides with the instilled sense of spontaneity kind of serving in their favour since at times one has the feeling that there’s no premeditated calculation working behind the scenes, and the guys were in a spacey, jamming mode throughout, not having plotted this charmingly dishevelled mish-mash beforehand. Still, one has to bear in mind the year of release as well since the musical criteria, including those of the metal industry, had been raised dramatically especially after the influx of technical/progressive thrash/death metal acts at the beginning of the decade which quickly rendered curiosities like the opus here to the underground. There was nothing bad in being stuck in the past decade, the more nostalgia-prone part of the fanbase would have preferred it this way, but recalling the pioneers at a time when there was nothing new looming on the horizon for the old school was hardly going to win the guys even an encouraging pat on the shoulder…

Regardless of the adverse surroundings, the band carried on with their odes to the retro thrash scene, and their next two opuses followed the chosen path unerringly by offering both slicker production and enhanced musical skills which led to some more serious, nearly progressive, moments on “Greedpeace”, arguably the band’s magnum opus, that came for the sake of the speed, though, a tendency which the band could have developed into something even more ambitious. Their passion for death metal prompted them to found another vehicle for it, Tortura, and release a pretty cool album (“Sanctuary of Abhorrence”, 1992) as a tribute to the Floridian movement.

The Kryptor team split up in 1997, but came back quickly in 2002 although apart from a best of compilation nothing else has been cooked in their “kitchen” so far. Whatever comes from there in the future, though, may make one run to the nearest pharmacy for painkillers and anaesthesia; the contemporary metal audience may not have developed the requisite tolerance towards this very old school bout of outrageous aggression sprayed with just the right amount of outlandish weirdness.