April 2020 Feature Release - The Horde Edition

It's now April which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I look forward to hearing your thoughts & opinions. 

This month's feature release for The Horde is 1996's classic sophomore album from Canadian brutal/technical death metal outfit Cryptopsy entitled "None So Vile". It's an album that pushed the limits of extremity to new heights & is widely regarded as the pinnacle of the brutal death metal subgenre. We're keen to hear your thoughts on it.

My comparison of this record to the "finger of God" description of an F5 from the film Twister still stands up every time I spin this.  For a genre that gets saturated by genuine crap very easily you have to wonder if there will ever be anything that gets close to touching this.  It is simply death metal nobility and should be revered as such by all fans of the genre.  You can appreciate all the component parts of the performance on the record to.  I mean Mounier steals the show yes but the lead work of Jon and the maniacal machinations of Lord Worm are so integral also to this delivery. 5/5

I have to admit that, despite being a huge fan of brutal death metal, owning a "None So Vile" era Cryptopsy t-shirt & having a relationship with the band that runs way back to the "Ungentle Exhumation" demo in 1993, I've never quite understood the immense praise that "None So Vile" seems to unanimously draw. I mean don't get me wrong. I quite like it. But it's never commanded more than the occasional listen from me.  It's a 3.5/5 for mine. Each to their own I guess.

Wow. This goes hard. 

I think this is the first Brutal Death Metal release I've been able to enjoy, since the riffs and beats are so well written and heavy. It takes all the foundations of Death Metal riffing and just cranks it up to 11 with insane drumming, disgusting chord and scale progressions, and compositions that have a ton going on but are still clear and headbang-able. The album definitely loses me when it dips into the brutal side of things with certain vocal passages just sounding random and thrown together with no real structure, but those are surprisingly few and far between.

I still have a really difficult time getting into this kind of stuff, and the brutal sections I mentioned before really ruin the experience for me overall, but this is a new high for me in a genre I normally can't stand. 

3/5, which is high praise considering the average Brutal Death Metal album for me is a 2/5.