Review by Saxy S for Cryptic Shift - Visitations From Enceladus (2020)

As I have mentioned before, there has been a thrash metal revival happening for quite a while now. One only needs to look at recent outputs from Kreator, Testament, Overkill and Death Angel to see that. But it also has a strong simmering underground scene, with bands like Havok, and Power Trip. But if you look a little deeper, you'll find thrash metal's outliers; the ones looking to push the genre boundaries to their limit.

This can been seen through output from Revocation, Vektor, and the band we are talking about today, Cryptic Shift. This debut album from this band from Leeds is as complex of a thrash metal album that you might ever hear, complete with death metal vocals, odd time signature changes, lots of bass, and an opening track that is longer than the rest of the album!

Now a quick reminder that I am not the biggest fan of technical thrash or technical death metal. I believe that it can be done well, but more often than not, bands will simply resort to blazing fast tunes and technically demanding parts, without any musical substance. And on Visitations From Enceladus, that feels very much the case. But I do at least appreciate what is on display here. I can hear plenty of good ideas that just don't feel like they were executed properly.

And let's start right out of the gate with "Moonbelt Immolator", a twenty-six minute opener that should have been reduced to about three/four separate tracks, perhaps connected together as apart of a larger piece. I don't mind long songs, but when the movements are disjointed from one another, and it feels like you are ending in a different place than the one you started in, it feels unfinished. I resort to songs like Dream Theater's "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" as benchmarks as to how elongated pieces should be done.

But outside of the overall form, the piece itself is pretty good. For a twenty-six minute piece like this, and I can reasonably only find three/four break points, that really impressive. The riffing is very good, the percussion modulates in and out of thrash/death metal, but never feels overwhelming. The bass presence on this entire album is fantastic; you can hear that strong low end at almost every moment, and the vocals do sound like very traditional death metal vocals and fit the mold very well; very reminiscent of Atheist or early Death.

The remaining three tunes are far more enjoyable for my taste; shorter tunes but keep an idea throughout the tracks runtime to give them all a sense of connectivity and fluidity. Some of the melodies on "(Petrified in the) Hypogean Gaol" and "Planetary Hypnosis" sound really good in the guitars, while the main hook of "The Arctic Chasm" is a slower, almost doom riff with progressive tendencies. I like the riff and it does keep the flow of the song going very well, but without a real melody to latch onto, it does hold that tune back just a little bit.

But as a whole, Cryptic Shift are a fairly new band and this debut record has them still trying to iron out their kinks. They don't want to be arbitrarily cast as "Vektor wannabes" and their is enough unique value here to keep them out of that descriptor. However, when it comes to extreme/technical metal, Vektor still has the better tunes, and Ulcreate's Stare Into Death and Be Still  from earlier this year is more connected. Still, if you need a new technical thrash metal album, without all of the caveats that come with listening to Vektor, Cryptic Shift is a bandwagon you should all get on early.