(written by Islander)
Imagery of sharp edges is a recurring feature in descriptions of the music and other aesthetics of the French death metal band CRYOXYD that have been circulated by Dolorem Records, which will release their debut album on December 12th.
The notes are described as “shards of bone” and the riffs as “blade-like”; their lyrics and visuals are described as “a shattered mirror held up to the abyss”; their stance is characterized as “neither provocative nor comforting, but surgical”; “Art as a Scalpel” sums it up.
The band’s intent is to create a conceptual artistic structure and identity devoted to the “autopsy of human collapse”, to confront “systemic dehumanization, collective madness, cognitive technodictatorship, and the moral failure of civilization” — “a sonic and visual manifesto against the illusion of progress, an X-ray of modern alienation’s mechanisms.”
How they seek to achieve these goals on their debut album This World We Live In… is through a formulation of music rooted in the technical death metal of the 1990s, drawing inspiration from the likes of Death (during the Human and Spiritual Healing eras), Pestilence, Brutality, and Morbid Angel, but as you’ll discover from the multi-dimensional album track we’re premiering today, they’ve put their own spin on those revered precedents.
Throughout the song, the riffing, the percussive patterns, and the tempos are in constant flux and manifest different sonic visions, some furious and hard-charging, some mysteriously paranormal and mind-warping. It will keep listeners on the edge of their seats, jolt them off-balance, and cast chilling spells.
At the outset, as the sound of the drums and the bass swell, brightly rippling keys give way to feverishly rippling fretwork and then a furiously pulsating riff backed by galloping beats and fronted by scalding lycanthropic howls, sometimes doubled for greater intensity. The guitars also swirl and skitter in ways that seem simultaneously sinister and bleak, and, with a shift in tempo, they also rapidly gnash.
When the band slow the pace, the music seems to moan and then it spirals high, leading into an ethereal guitar solo that slowly wails, rapidly warps, and maniacally squalls above dismally churning riffage and steady beats.
That’s a fascinating change, a different dimension of sound and mood, and it stays in the head even after the band reprise their more intensely surging and swerving motifs from the song’s earlier phases — especially because they bring that chilling and eerily reverberating slower phase back again at the end, in tandem with even more inflamed vocal terrors.
CRYOXYD is:
Eron / Guitars, Vocals
Nekro / Guitars
Nicolas SANSON / Bass
Grégoire GALICHET / Drums
This World We Live In… was mixed and mastered by Kristian Øgir at Everloud Studios (DK), and it features cover art by Kevirus and logo by Eron.
Dolorem Records will release it on CD with a 12-page booklet, as well as digitally. Find more info via the links below, and then also take in the previously released performance video for the album’s electrifying (and again multi-dimensional) first single, “Day After Day“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.doloremrecords.com/fr/music/629-cryoxyd-this-world-we-live-in-cd.html
https://doloremrecords.bandcamp.com/album/this-world-we-live-in-album
CRYOXYD:
https://linktr.ee/cryoxyd
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558311458224