CRYPTIC SHIFT

A substantial amount of the best heavy music is dedicated to ramming home the horrors of real life, the idiocy that plagues the world and the terrible things that human beings do to one another. But for those with rich, vivid imaginations, there is equal attention given to the philosophical, the cerebra, and the avowedly cosmic. CRYPTIC SHIFT made it plain which side they were on as far back as their 2016 EP "Beyond The Celestial Realms". A fearlessly progressive take on experimental thrash and death metal, the UK quartet's ambition was self-evident, and their distinctive and eccentric approach was their most irresistible selling point. By the time they released their full-length 2020 debut, "Visitations from Enceladus", they had left this earthly plane and rocketed off into the stratosphere. They had become wilder and more thrillingly multi-dimensional, with expansive, multi-part songs that were far more than the sum of their influences, but still utterly, viscerally thrilling and true to the audacious, arcane spirit of underground extremity. Frothing, near-hysterical reviews followed, and rightly so. But even keen observers of CRYPTIC SHIFT's tangential rise will find it hard to process their next move. "Overspace & Supertime" is truly, unequivocally mind-blowing. An 80-minute, five-song, warp-speed voyage through alien realms and unfathomable, freewheeling brain-scapes, it casually dwarfs its predecessor and makes it even more apparent that this band are something special.

There is method to CRYPTIC SHIFT's madness. This is music that has been cultivated from a far-reaching diet of thrash and death metal, psychedelic indulgence, liberated jazz fusion and a heavenly host of other perverse ideas. And yet, the whole marathon exercise hangs together beautifully, flowing from one bizarre eruption of virtuoso mastery to the next, and never once losing its unearthly momentum. The opening "Cryogenically Frozen" is arguably the most digestible of these insane flights of fancy, but only in the sense that it stops before the ten-minute mark. In every other respect, this whirlwind of riffs, tempo fits and intuitive ensemble chaos sets an extraordinary benchmark for what follows. Fans of forward-thinking metal mavens like BLOOD INCANTATION and GORGUTS will certainly recognize the freedom being explored and exploited here, but the Brits have their own unique, compositional signature, and as "Overspace & Supertime" pursues its wayward course, the fizzing genius that drives them is unmistakable. A triumph for malice and mischief, this is third-eye metal with a hard-on for obscurity and an intergalactic sense of subversive abandon.

If any one of these mind-expanding songs encapsulates the CRYPTIC SHIFT modus operandi, it must be "Stratocumulus Evergaol". If there is a more immersive and fascinating 30 minutes released in the name of metal this year: well, there won't be. A brutal, untamed and ornately metallic echo of the colossal prog epics of the '70s, it ebbs, flows, splurges and sprawls across its half-hour span, doing things that the vast majority of metal bands could not even contemplate. It drifts through incomprehensible movements with the time-defying drive of a hyperspace joyride, throwing out multiple moments of exhilarating, progged-out thrash, while filling the space between them with some of the most far-out and inconceivable dissonance, improvised atmospherics and tightly plotted prog perversity. If CRYPTIC SHIFT had simply released "Stratocumulus Evergaol" as a stand-alone statement, it would still be the most staggering musical achievement of the year so far.

But there is more. "Hyperspace Topography", "Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)" and the 20-minute title track all contain suffocating quantities of wildly creative information, and the band's blistering musicianship is frequently jaw-dropping. This is an album to get lost in: an escape from the mundane, a brain-spinning trip into the obsidian kaleidoscope of the cosmos and a dizzying and outrageous assault on the senses. Not everyone will get it. Some will leave early, bewildered and shellshocked. But for those who dare to swallow it in its multifarious entirety, this will be an instant contender for album of the year and a certified classic to be cherished until the sun consumes the earth.