Cryptopsy - As Gomorrah Burns (LP) - Copper Vinyl

Cryptopsy didn’t just come back with As Gomorrah Burns, they came back swinging. Released in 2023 on Nuclear Blast, it’s their first full‑length since the self‑titled 2012 record, and you can feel that decade of pressure venting across a tight, sub‑40‑minute set. The Montreal stalwarts keep their reputation for obscene technicality intact, but there’s a mean, street‑level focus here that makes the whole thing hit like a brick.

The first taste most of us got was In Abeyance, a single that signalled the intent straight away. Pinwheeling riffs, pit‑baiting lurches, and Flo Mounier’s inhuman sense of time all meshed with that particular Cryptopsy chaos. Flayed the Swine followed and doubled down. It is fast and ugly in the best way, but it also shows how the band now builds songs that stick, rather than just blow your fringe back for three minutes. You come away humming drum patterns, which sounds odd until you remember who is behind the kit. Mounier remains the engine and the spectacle, a clinic in precision that never feels clinical.

Christian Donaldson’s guitars are the razor. He has been the band’s guitarist and studio brain for years, and he produced this set with the kind of modern clarity that still leaves room for grime. The Grid in Montreal has become a bit of a hub for extreme metal, and you can hear why. There’s space for Olivier Pinard’s bass to growl underneath, there’s bite in the mids, and when Matt McGachy barks, the consonants are sharp enough to cut. McGachy has spoken in interviews about the record’s themes, pulling inspiration from modern horrors and online cult behaviour, using the Gomorrah image as social rot made literal. Those lyrics give the album a sickly neon glow, like browsing true‑crime forums at 3 am when you should be asleep.

What I love is how the band balances old instincts with experience. Fans who live and die by None So Vile will hear the familiar unpleasantness, that sense that the next bar might pull the floor out from under you. Yet there’s a compositional patience that came with the years and with the stopgap EPs The Book of Suffering. Riffs develop, motifs circle back, and the payoffs feel earned. It’s still ruthlessly technical death metal, but it is also an album meant to be played front to back, not just a sampler platter of blastbeats.

As Gomorrah Burns landed to a lot of nods from the metal press, and it’s not hard to see why. It sounds like a band who refused to be a nostalgia act, even with a back catalogue that could have kept them on festival posters forever. The pacing helps. The album never drags, never loses the thread, and the sequencing makes sense. It breathes just enough between assaults to let the details register, so when the next run of inside‑out riffing arrives, you actually feel the lift.

If you’re eyeing As Gomorrah Burns vinyl, you’re in for a punchy master that suits the format. The low end sits nicely without turning to soup, and the cymbals have that glassy shimmer that feels good through speakers. Cryptopsy vinyl often disappears fast once a pressing sells through, so if you’re crate‑digging in a Melbourne record store, grab it before someone else with better cardio does. And if you prefer the comfort of a couch and a cuppa, buy Cryptopsy records online from a local shop that knows how to pack a sleeve. There are plenty of options for vinyl records Australia wide now, and having Cryptopsy albums on vinyl on your shelf is one of those small life decisions you won’t regret.

Thirteen years is a long gap between full‑lengths, yet this doesn’t sound tentative or over‑worked. It sounds hungry. When the last feedback squeal fades, there’s that daft grin that only extreme music can produce, the one that says this is horrible, please play it again. Not many bands endure long enough to earn a second prime. Cryptopsy might have just written theirs.