CRYPTIC

Let me just say this from the start of my review - Dan Swanö is the heart and soul of Edge of Sanity. People might argue against that, but Cryptic proves that I'm right. This album is generic and uninspired death metal, and is a huge disappointment in the band's discography. Edge of Sanity's previous album, Infernal was an awkward and flawed release, but the album had many high quality moments thanks to Dan Swanö. With this album it's very obvious that Edge of Sanity is struggling without their frontman.

On Cryptic the compositions are noticeably weaker than on any other Edge of Sanity release, and that is the biggest problem here. Without Dan Swanö's songwriting, the band can only create rather uninspired music. On Infernal, many of the compositions without Dan's help were poor, but on this album all of them are severely lacking.

I don't consider these songs bad just because they're not prog. Unorthodox is pure death metal, but it's a really great album from the band. This album is just disastrous, and there's really no other way of putting it. When you compare this to masterpieces like Crimson, and great albums like Crimson II and Purgatory Afterglow, this is far below the quality of those albums.

The album is not a complete failure, though. Songs like "No Destiny" (my favorite from the album) and "Uncrontroll Me" are pretty good by death metal standards, though they are far below the usual standard from Edge of Sanity. Many of the songs aren't very memorable, and that's one of the biggest flaws from this album. When I finish listening to this album I can only recall 2 or 3 riffs, and that just shows how uninspired this album is.

Conclusion:

Cryptic is a really disappointing effort from Edge of Sanity, and it isn't worth more than 1 star. The lack of memorable compositions really destroys this album, even though the musicianship is tight and the production is great. Even if you're interested in Edge of Sanity, there really is no reason to own this album. This holds no interest to fans of progressive metal, and this isn't even a quality death metal release. This is only for die-hard collectors.

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