Well, when someone, intrigued by our strange (for him …) musical preferences, would ask us to make him listen to something, for example, definable as death doom, this new album by Krypts would be perfect. Far from the melancholic and comforting nature of its melodic fringe, the genre interpreted by the Finnish band becomes the quintessence of malignity that becomes music and authentic soundtrack of the most terrifying Lovecraftian evocations, so much so that our hypothetical interlocutor will perhaps be irremediably attracted or, more likely, will avoid us from the next day like the plague. A magnificent Arrow Of Entropy opens a work that, since the first notes, makes us understand that it won’t disappoint, fatally attracting us in its abysses in which funereal vate reveals Antti Kotiranta (also at the bass), with his pitiless growl; his worthy companions Otso Ukkonen (drums), Ville Snicker and Jukka Aho (guitars) support him with their maelstrom sound that mixes Morbid Angel, Incantation and Asphyx on one hand, and Evoken, Thergothon and Colosseum on the other. The result is a monolith with scary traits whose name is still Krypts, beyond any possible reference to the past and present; unlike many attempts, commendable but often fallacious, to bring back these sounds that found life in the ’90s especially, the four Finns do not limit themselves to rant into a microphone on a rough sound carpet, essential and often produced to the best: Remnants Of Expansion is the state of the art of death doom and has only one flaw, that of lasting barely half an hour, although due to its vehemence it actually appears much longer. Our guys are not at all just grinders of murderous riffs, but they know how to create suspended but disturbing atmospheres, neither more nor less than when, with great wisdom, they erect sound walls of rare density. As said, in a little more than half an hour Remnants Of Expansion completes its annihilating path of death, leaving stunned for an intensity that goes well beyond the mere power of execution: there is not a single superfluous note in this mephitic work, but I consider Entrailed To The Breaking Wheel one of the best songs that the genre has offered us in the new century, exhibiting in a little more than five minutes the virtual content of an hour of music. Nothing else to say, it remains only to descend with the Krypts in putrid meanders that their music makes tangible as the loner of Providence was able to do, about a century ago, thanks to his tormented pen.

2016 – Dark Descent Records