Style: Brutal Death Metal, technical death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Violence, murder, anti-christianity, mutilation, destruction of morals
Thoughts: The first time I sat down and read the lyrics to Cryptopsy's None So Vile I instantly regretted it. I lived in a household that would not approve, not in the slightest. Reading the verses of Slit Your Guts was... gruesome if we are lenient and torture porn if we call this what it really is. I hid the CD and only ever listened to it when my family was out of the house... I was scared of what would happen should they ever find it.
These are the kinds of stories that metal heads look back on fondly. I have such strong memories of feeling like I was doing something so deviant, so despicable, that I had to hide it's very existence. Those were good times. Here now I am, some nearly 30 years later listening to the same album, but not in fear of being found out. Quite the opposite, I want people to know that I enjoy this album - because it kicks ass!
Crytopsy play a definitive form of death metal on None So Vile. They are brutal beyond all comprehension, led by the impressive vocals of none other than Lord Worm. Let's settle in with our dear Canadians here for a few moments and see what these thirty something minutes have in store for us.
Starting with the vocals, the esteemed Lord Worm does not have a single comprehensible line in the entire album. This is grunting, gurgling, spewing, shouting, and just about any other adjective you can think of except comprehensible. The vocals sound like a man possessed.
Let's take a step back here and take in the full extent of what is going on with the Worm's vocals. This is unlike any performance that had come before it - or arguably after. Before None So Vile this type of vocal styling simply did not exist. This helped define what the term "brutal" would eventually become. This not only set a new standard for death metal vocals, this is now THE bar for death metal vocals. One of the, if not the greatest vocal performance in the genre. Q.E.D.
The rest of the band are hardly slouches either. Flo's drumming reinvented what fast is with the gravity blast. Jon's guitar work is among some of the most intricate and ferocious that the genre has ever seen. Eric's inclusion of slap bass on several songs is not only novel in death metal, it sounds damn good to boot!
Cryptopsy play what I like to call sloppy precision. The music is so technical and so blazingly fast it sounds incredibly sloppy when it is played together. The thing is... it sounds the same very time... i.e. it's intentional. This style gives the music a sense that it is barely contained. There is an underlying chaos or beast that is trying to break out and it is held back by the smallest of margins. If it were to be let loose the entirety of reality would be consumed.
None So Vile will go down in my history books as one of the top five best releases in the genre. No one has created anything like this before or after. It contains no faults. It is completely untouchable for standards that it sets for the genre. Now, writing this 27 years after it's release... the album still stands as one of the pillars of death metal. This is not opinion, just straight facts.
"You do that rather well... don't you think?"
Written November 6th 2023
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