(On April 11th the German destroyers in Cytotoxin independently released their new album Biographyte. For our friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth it was one of his most eagerly anticipated albums of the year, and now we have his review of it.)
Finally, it is here. Rejoice!
Greetings and salutations, friends. My early exposures to Cytotoxin generally revolved around me hearing the early moments of the Gammageddon album, with its overwhelming flurry of guitar notes and pig-squeal vocals, just enough for me to decide that this sort of brutal tech probably wasn’t my kind of thing. It wasn’t until I dove into 2020’s Nuklearth, an album that sanded down a lot of brutal death metal’s rough edges, that Cytotoxin really clicked for me, and while it finished fourth on my year-end list for 2020 (a fascinating read four years later, and one that would likely undergo some restructuring with current hindsight), in the years that have followed it’s easily the album from that year that I’ve listened to the most.
My initial misgivings with brutal death metal stemmed from the more over-the-top elements of the subgenre: the ridiculousness of the ultra-low guttural or pig-squeal vocals, the pinging snare drums and rough mixes in general, the gratuitously violent and sometimes misogynistic art and lyrics. Nuklearth had basically none of these, but still married brutality with tech-death precision into something not quite like anything else I had heard. From there I branched out, starting with the rest of the Cytotoxin discography, then to adjacent bands like Katalepsy, Benighted, Unfathomable Ruination, and Analepsy. I still avoid most of the genre, but my horizons have broadened anyway.
And now, here we are, five years later, with Cytotoxin finally releasing a follow-up album. Biographyte has been one of my most anticipated albums of the year, and after a dozen listens or so, I can confidently say that it has lived up to expectations. In many ways, it represents a combination of Nuklearth’s groove and slam leanings with the more balls-out technical excess of Gammageddon, a mix that feels like Cytotoxin really settling into their sound.
There really aren’t a lot of bands that sound like Cytotoxin, which is honestly kind of surprising in the crowded subgenres of tech death and brutal death. Vocalist Sebastian “Grimo” Grihm’s bestial vocals are distinctive, generally eschewing the pig squeals and gurgly gutturals that were more common on the first three Cytotoxin albums, sticking to his signature roars that he used almost exclusively on Nuklearth; while he does occasionally throw in the other elements, they’re used sparingly and don’t detract from the music. Drummer Maximilian Panzer is a newcomer to the band but sounds like a natural, ably keeping pace with the ever-shifting music and adding flourishes of his own. Bassist Vitalis “V.T.” Kast occasionally gets lost in the guitar pyrotechnics, but his signature tone, a little dirty with a bit of a metallic twang, is an essential part of the album’s sound and gets his own moments to shine through, whether he’s sweeping in lockstep with the guitars (as he does on ‘Condemnesia’) or providing the intro to ‘Transition Of The Staring Dead’.
Above all else, though, Cytotoxin is a band driven by its guitarists, and the duo of Fabrice “Fonzo” Töpfer and Jason Melidonie is absolutely top-notch. Their scalpel-precise riffs are interspersed with sweeps, arpeggios, and tremolo picking, and while this is often the case with technical death metal bands, the true genius is in how these elements are deployed and woven together. There are several tracks, from the album-opening ‘Hope Terminator’ to ‘The Everslave’, that immediately burst into a flurry of notes, in a manner reminiscent of Gammageddon’s legendary opener ‘Radiatus Generis’, something that was missing on Nuklearth. Sweep-picked sections are frequent throughout the album, interleaved with riffs and tremolo sections, the latter of which I think truly set the band apart.
Tremolo picking is generally more common on black metal, but throughout their discography Cytotoxin have used the technique as a method of adding melody and propulsion, frequently using it to double, triple, or quadruple notes that might otherwise be single notes. It’s a fairly straightforward thing, but not something that is frequently used by other tech death bands, making it something of a signature for Cytotoxin. Sometimes they intersperse these tremolo sections around riffs or sweeps (as on the aforementioned ‘The Everslave’ or on album closer ‘From Bitter Rivers’), but they also use these sections to add melody beneath Grimo’s vocals (as on ‘Condemnesia’ and ‘Eventless Horizon’), and it’s incredibly effective.
The way that these elements mesh has always been Cytotoxin’s true strength. I’ve mentioned before in previous reviews that to stand out in tech death, you need to offer something that separates you from the pack. When every tech death band out there has an insane level of talent by default, it’s usually the songwriting chops that help a band stand out, and across five albums Cytotoxin have consistently shown that they have some of the best. They’re aided by top-notch mastering and production (courtesy of former Aborted guitarist Mendel bij de Leij), which might not please the brutal death metal purists but it’s absolutely necessary to keep the various elements of the band’s sound from turning into mush.
There may be some criticism in the fact that Biographyte sounds a lot like the two albums that precede it, that there’s really not any kind of innovation, but it’s faint criticism at best. Brutal death metal isn’t exactly a subgenre known for innovation, and when you’re already pretty innovative it makes sense to keep doing what you do best. Honestly, if you had asked me what I wanted out of a new Cytotoxin album before hearing Biographyte, my answer would have been a mix of Gammageddon‘s technical excess and Nuklearth‘s melody and groove, and that’s precisely what Biographyte delivers. It’s not likely to change anyone’s mind about the band if you’ve already formed an opinion, but it’s going to make the fans happy. I expect Biographyte to make a strong push for the top on my final year-end list, and I cannot recommend this album highly enough.
https://www.cytotoxin.de/shop/
https://cytotoxin.bandcamp.com/album/biographyte
https://www.facebook.com/Cytotoxinmetal