CELESTIAL DEATH

"Celestial Death" is the second full-length studio album by Dutch thrash metal act Cryptosis. The album was released through Century Media Records in March 2025. It´s the successor to "Bionic Swarm" from March 2021, although the two full-length studio albums are bridged by the December 2023 "The Silent Call" EP.

While the material on "Celestial Death" is in some ways a continuation of the technical/progressive thrash metal style of "Bionic Swarm", Cryptosis have increased the progressive songwriting and mindset on "Celestial Death". It´s overall a much more polished, sophisticated, and above all keyboard driven release, almost to the point of being a symphonic oriented technical/progressive thrash metal release. The album features an epic atmosphere and the music is often multi-layered with guitars and keyboards filling every space of the soundscape. The keyboards are quite dominant on this one along with the raw shouting/semi-growling vocals. The guitars are often in the back of the mix and the same can be said about the drums and the bass. In that respect the mix is a bit uneven, and to my ears louder guitars and less keyboards would have made "Celestial Death" a more well balanced release. The sound production unfortuately ends up making the material sound less powerful and raw than it could have been.

With the negatives out of the way, "Celestial Death" is still a high quality release from Cryptosis, featuring high level musicianship, solid songwriting, and despite my issues with the production, a professional sound production. It´s definitely the sound of a band who have evolved and who aren´t afraid to try new things, and the adventurous mindset is admirable. I do hope they ease on the use of keyboards on the next album though, but it´s just my subjective opinion. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).