Review by Ben for Cryptopsy - Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994)

Great, punishing death metal let down by a crappy production.

Cryptopsy's debut album is a difficult beast to review. On the one hand, it contains truly awesome, technical and brutal death metal that while perhaps not as amazing as on second album None So Vile, certainly crushes a lot of the competition out there. On the other hand, the production is severely lacking, with certain instruments (i.e. the guitars) totally overshadowed by the drums and bass. The drumming is fantastic and so it's such a shame that it sounds like someone clattering on some garbage bins down in the alley. The vocals too are not always fantastic, with just about every vomitous (I think I made that up) word sounding identical to every other one. The screams are certainly impressive, and Lord Worm's lyric sheet may be filled with poetic meanderings into the darker side of humanity, but I think he pretty much ignored them entirely when spewing out these indecipherable monstrosities.

So, the question is, does Blasphemy Made Flesh offer enough to overcome these discrepancies to make it worth it's while? I think the answer is yes, but I'll always wonder how good an album it would have been with the production it deserves. It must be said that the musicianship is frickin excellent despite the recording and that also includes the fantastic leads that pop up irregularly. When the drumming slows down, you will find a multitude of memorable riffs that are just screaming out to be heard. It's hard to pick highlights, but I do find the first half of the album to be better than the second, with tracks like Defenestration, Abigor and Serial Messiah being among the best. The second half is not terrible by any stretch, but perhaps not as memorable, and the sound starts to grate on me after a while. All up, I think Cryptopsy had the bare bones of something truly blasphemous and wonderfully monstrous with Blasphemy Made Flesh, but I don't think they really managed to add the flesh to the bones until they unleashed None So Vile in all its glory.