Album Review: Psycroptic - Psycroptic

Psycroptic opens mysteriously with Middle Eastern-influenced guitar sounds that make way for a crushing record. As you’d expect, speed and technicality characterise the album; terrorising blast beats tremble at great speeds as scales are traversed on the fretboard with style and flair. Intelligent breakdowns offer juicy guitar tones and a welcomed change of pace from what is mostly 100 miles a minute. The vocal performance takes a couple of songs to gain momentum, shining through with some wicked patterns on A Soul Once Lost, the composition of which will wow the shit of you as the culminating guitar solo weaves in and out of its breakdown. The relentless speed of the album makes it breeze by as a listen. It’s all too easy to get lost in the enjoyment of listening before realising you’re two songs further into the album than you thought. The record is pure, satisfying carnage. It’s easy to take for granted what’s put into a piece of music when it’s presented merely as a product that one can consume thoughtlessly and instantaneously, but it has to be agreed to the highest degree that the skill and integrity involved in writing music of this calibre is the product of years and years of dedicated practice and ongoing perseverance. It’s tantalising to imagine these songs performed live. Psycroptic already have the equivalent in stage prowess of a bloodthirsty dogfight. This one is for fans of boundary-pushing heavy metal.