Artist: CRYPTOPSY
Album: ONCE WAS NOT (CD O-CARD)

Release date: 2005
Media type: CD

Reinventing and redefining metal’s boundaries, CRYPTOPSY, recognized worldwide for infusing extreme music with awe-inspiring precision, inhuman rhythms, and mouth-foaming viciousness, have earned the respect of music fans inside and outside the metal community. The band’s potent recordings and punishing live performance have confirmed their place in music’s elite. And now a new manifest of the band’s inexorable brutality, top-class musicianship and inventiveness is about to shatter the Death Metal genre once and for all, “Once Was Not” will make you suffer and still beg for more!

Founded in 1992, Canadian CRYPTOPSY were launched into the international metal scene following their “Ungentle Exhumation” demo release and debut CD, “Blasphemy Made Flesh” (Invasion Records, 1994). Both releases were extremely positively received by the Death Metal underground and showcased a highly talented, murderously brutal new act. Thus quickly signed to Sweden’s Wrong Again Records (who also discovered In Flames and Arch Enemy), the band issued their next underground classic “None So Vile” (1996), which severely outclassed peers and resulted in the band being cited as having reinvigorated the style. Their intense energy and musical superiority led to their Century Media international record deal and also the North American re-release of their first two CDs. Hand-picked by departing vocalist Lord Worm, Mike DiSalvo (ex-Infestation) recorded with CRYPTOPSY on their following albums “Whisper Supremacy” (1998) and “And Then You’ll Beg” (2000). Whereas “Whisper Supremacy” explored new boundaries of musical complexity and sheer blasting aggression, “And Then You’ll Beg” could attract – for the first time in the band’s career – both attention and acclamation from major Metal press since the still highly demanding material appeared even better arranged than on its predecessors and was blessed with a murderous sound. Surprising breaks, stunning leads, furious noise and the heaviness of a freight train rolling you over – as visually captured on the album’s cover – CRYPTOPSY had again vehemently proven their status within the Death Metal genre as one of the most exceptional bands active. Following the release, DiSalvo performed on the group’s numerous tours across Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Japan until new vocalist Martin Lacroix filled in for their 2002 touring and performed on 2003’s “None So Live” concert experience, which presented the band as a guarantor for intense, brain-melting Death Metal insanity onstage.

Injecting renewed excitement into their committed fan base, Lord Worm rejoined the band in 2003, who had already tortured his throat on the classic demo, debut album and second full-length assault. With his unique, highly variable ever sick voice a new level of vocal morbidity and ravaging musical extremity was aimed for by the band and with “Once Was Not”; such aim which has undoubtedly been achieved. Recorded in Spring 2005 at Studio Vortex in St-Constant, Canada by producer Sйbastien Marsan, “Once Was Not” demonstrates the effect that years of touring with extreme metal’s leaders (including Dimmu Borgir, Krisiun, Vader, Kataklysm) and performing at prestigious European festivals has given them. Dare to test your ears on this highly ambitious, astonishingly variable piece of mind-blowing Death Metal that shows the mass of uninspired sounding acts in the genre what potential it can offer if exercised with skill and ingenuity. Hear why they are one of metal’s defining acts and why they have earned the distinction of being mentioned in the same breath as Cannibal Corpse, Meshuggah, Morbid Angel, and Dillinger Escape Plan. Also, witness CRYPTOPSY return to Europe on headlining tour activity by early 2006 when they unleash the blistering material of “Once Was Not” on the lusting fan hordes...

TRACKLIST:

01. Luminum
02. In The Kingdom Where Everything Dies, The Sky Is Mortal
03. Carrionshine
04. Adeste Infidelis
05. The Curse Of The Great
06. The Frantic Pace Of Dying
07. Keeping The Cadaver Dogs Busy
08. Angelskingarden
09. The Pestilence That Walketh In Darkness (Psalm 91: 5-8)
10. The End
11. Endless Cemetery

LINE-UP:

Mike DiSavo (vocals)
Jon Levasseur (guitar)
Alex Auburn (guitar)
Eric Langlois (bass)
Flo Mounier (drums)