Krypts, Unending Degradation
Man, I don’t think that Krypts could have come up with a better moniker for themselves or their desolate brand of death metal if it had been bestowed upon them by Satan himself. This Finnish three piece’s debut full-length, Unending Degradation, sounds as though it were recorded deep in some forgotten mausoleum, the stench of death hanging heavy in the stagnant air. Hell, even the opening intro leaves a lasting, grimy film over you as it churns with low-end, rumbling death metal.
As the reverb fades and the opening salvo of crawling, lurching riffs within “Perpetual Beyond” have ceased, the band builds the momentum back up with the absolutely crushing “Blessed Entwinement,” which I can only imagine is the telling of some corpse-driven orgy of rotten flesh and splintering bone. The song has plenty of ebb and flow as the guys work their way through monolithic riffs, rumbling bottom end and perfectly timed eruptions of higher tempo mayhem — all the while maintaining an air of vileness and despair.
The burly, bowler-quaking rumble continues with the sludgy beginnings of “Open the Crypt” — that is, before Otso Ukkonen (drums), Ville Snicker (guitars) and Antti Kotiranta (vocals and bass) decide to unleash a galloping groove about halfway through. The lead and overall guitar tone throughout this song (and the rest of the album, really) is unnerving and creepy. Needless to say it fits the vibe of the album perfectly. A more pronounced, marshall-like rhythm gets “Dormancy of the Ancients” off to a solid start as a decent bit of head-banging groove sets in as the song crawls through its unwavering seven and half minutes.
Krypts have some seriously brooding and dark death metal on their hands with this first effort. The album crashes all eight songs with a variety of rhythms, but for the most part the death metal found here predominantly moves at the pace of rigor mortis, but the guys are wise to inject a solid mid-tempo at just the right points to keep the music from festering in its own filth. Check out “The Black Smoke” and it’s rumbling gallop as a prime example. Or better yet, check out the punishing “Day of Reckoning” — a song that may start off slowly, but quickly takes off with barbaric drum work and vicious riffing.
And once “Beneath the Archaic” and its compelling, yet devious melodies have weaved their way into your cranial cavity, you’ve been held captive for just over half an hour. Unending Degradation isn’t the most rambunctious of albums nor is it the most lively, but what it may lack in those area, it more than makes up for in its steadfast dedication to the weighty and loathsome death metal that oozes and crawls from your speakers each time you hit play. Krypts certainly have something here on which they can continue to build.