Review Summary: Compared to the other albums, 'The Unspoken King' sucks so much it breathes spunk instead of air.
I'm just going to get straight to the point, this is a huge fail Cryptopsy. I respect a band wanting to do something different after all it's their band and their entitled to do what they want with there music but if a band changes there sound at least make it descent quality instead of making it just plain bad and cock the whole thing up. This album is nothing compared to there old albums and I think we have enough reasons to say 'None So Vile' is amazing. It's a good thing that Lord Worm stopped singing for Cryptopsy (since now his noise is just bland compared to his glory days) however he should have done two things. He should still write the lyrics for Cryptopsy and he should have found a much better replacement.
Since the biggest change to the music is the new singer Matt McGachy lets talk about his performance which can be summed up in one word....atrocious! Seriously in a band like Cyptopsy he's got some standards to live up to and he fails pathetically (and who ever thought putting a bad deathcore singer in a tech death metal band is a good idea has a brain hemorrhage). His growls are just plain average at best, his high pitched shrieks are equal to having a chesse grater tear at your ears and just the thought of having the worst clean vocals I've ever heard in Cryptopsy is just mind scarring. I could stab Corey Taylor (singer of SlipKnot) in the neck with a dirty shard of glass and he could still do clean vocals better then this twat can. As for the other new member of the band Maggie Durand (keyboard and samples) i'm not going to waste my breath on Maggie since her contributions are barely used and are completely pointless in the first place.
Despite the two newbies and Alex being forced to play generic but technically good riffs all day with brief highlights of shred, Eric and especially Fio are still in top form (despite having to play songs with bad songwriting in the first place). Eric Langlois is clearly heard in the mix showing technical mastery over the bass adding variety and colour to a bland mix of mess. Flo Mounier is still faster then a road runner on crack never showing and hint of weakness in his unrelenting assault in drums after all this is Flo Mounier were talking about.
Now for the song themselves (unfortunately). Songs repeating themselves with run over the mill song writing: Check, Dull lyrics: Check and Breakdown spamming: Check. Out of all of these flaws, bad song writing cripples this album into submission since the songs repeat themselves and the songs are bad in the first place with dull lyrics and breakdown spamming are the toppings on a cake of ***. The breakdowns are good but just overused so if the album had all of it's songs like 'Worship Your Demons' with a breakdown used once every song or to we would have a poor album to a great albums. Speaking of 'Worship Your Demons' despite all the problems this album has, there is hope that this experiment will work in time with them beams of light being 'Worship Your Demons' and 'Leach'. 'Worship Your Demons' is everything a Deathcore song should be with lighting fast riffs and creative and technical licks in breakdowns with no god awful clean vocals (I actually liked Matt in this song although the last 30 secs of the song was boring) and 'Leach' stands out for having a great second half and clean vocals that helped the song (somehow).
Pros
- Great bass and drumming
- 'Worship Your Demons' gives us some hope
- Having the balls to try this
Cons
- Abysmal vocals
- Too many breakdowns
- Repetative
- Bad songwriting
- Bad lyrics
- The keyboard was pointless.
Highlights:
'Worship Your Demons': Deathcore done right, lighting fast and creative.
'Leach': A great breakdown with clean vocals which just worked (somehow)
So the 'The Unspoken King' in a nutshell. A huge disappointment and a failed experiment although it can work. If they kick out Matt and get a much better singer, have no pointless add ons e.g. keyboards and be given time to work on this for few years to fix everything (at the very least stop spamming breakdown down our necks and not be repetitive) we could have possibly the greatest comeback ever, making an album great for DM and Deathcore fans alike but it's almost certain that's not going to happen.
2/5
Opeth Of Epica
