A new album released from Cryptic Confinement delivers a thrashing and blisteringly powerful form of metal that hits hard and comes with a blend of metal subgenres from death, black, thrash, melodic, and more and the whole record has a connective feel to it as if it's a concept album of sorts which really entices you to listen to the entire thing through.
The Tempestuous Demise album is a fierce one and along with these fiery riffs and deep guitar tones, comes a vastness in its underbelly along with a sort of dark and almost gothic feel as well, and all this is rolled up into one massive opus of a record that gives you different sides of the band and their songwriting.
All the elements that are brought to the table throughout this record are intense and the album thrives in terms of this electric energy that's delivered which is incredible because the project is an instrumental collaboration that is helmed by one man named Zakk Weathersby who likely performs a lot of what you hear throughout these songs because he is indeed a multi-instrumentalist so he may be doing drums on certain tracks, plenty of guitars I'm sure, and more.
No matter how much Zakk himself is actually performing, the point is that this is a record that displays such an amazing level of musicianship in general simply because there are so many great time signatures, changes, progressions, and even moods across this album.
By the time you get halfway through you kind of begin to expect a little bit of the unexpected and there are indeed more than a few surprises around its corners, but it still sticks to that thrashing metal soundscape.
This is 100% a passion project and anyone and everyone involved is giving everything they have in terms of performance which is an important aspect because people who don't listen to a lot of metal don't understand the kind of techniques that are needed and practice that you have to have to pull this kind of stuff off.
This record involves classic metal approaches but also blends those genres as I mentioned earlier, and delivers these sorts of mathy and intricate phrases, riffs, and timing that you have to know your stuff to be able to pull off.
The crazy thing about this record is that that energy feels almost like a live performance and anyone that's involved is feeding off of each other in the moment so it's pretty incredible to capture that kind of energy and that kind of feel on a record that's a collaboration between different artists with a leading musician that's likely performing multiple instruments on multiple songs.
Having said all that, I have to just give a heads up to the drumming on this record because it is absolutely mind-boggling from the very first track on.
This record hits like a sucker punch to the gut from beginning to end you'll have to reacclimate yourself back to reality again by the time it's over and I love that approach.
There was definitely a lot of attention to detail during the creation of this album, but it never loses this sort of character and theme that it starts with, and these songs take you to sort of faraway places and pull you away from your surroundings.
If you are a guitar player or a drummer, this will be the bee's knees if you will because it'll blow you away.
You have some down-tuned guitars maybe drop D or drop B giving the record an even heavier and more doomish edge, and the whole thing is almost like reading an HP Lovecraft book in the sense that after you listen to a track you almost want to go back and re-listen to it again right away just to be able to understand and soak everything in.
There are a lot of killer changes throughout this record, and this was a very brilliant and extremely well-built metal album from beginning to end so check this out and do not be afraid to turn it up.
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