[Cover art by Jesse Jacobi]
A recent conversation among friends – all current or former Last Rites writers – discussed Opeth’s (in)famous song “Black Rose Immortal,” and its merits and pitfalls. Some friends love the track, and one friend quite notoriously despises it because of its rather, shall we say “riff salad” structure. Said friend likes to point out that Mikael Åkerfeldt himself is in the Morningrise reissue liner notes saying his only goal with the song was to cross the 20-minute mark, which is a pretty valid argumentative point.
But any outcomes of the discussion/argument itself are not necessarily the important part—no one’s opinions changed in the slightest. No, the part relevant to this review is what another friend said, that his opinion of the song likely formed before he developed “critic brain.” He was able to come at the song with a purer, less analytical mindset, just allowing the 20 minutes of great riffs and passages to impact him regardless of how they all fit together. Basically, he came at the song with “fan brain.”
The truth is that they’re both right. This record is both rad and somewhat bloated, yet it speeds by despite that bloat, even if you’ll undoubtedly lose the thread on more than one occasion. Will a listener’s perception of Overtime & Supertime depend more on their perspective than the record itself? Well, perhaps, but that’s true of all art to one degree or another. If this is beginning to read like an excuse to not actually render a verdict, well, that kind of is the verdict. But that doesn’t mean we won’t dig in a little deeper. Details coming…
…right about now. Cryptic Shift plays a whirlwind style of technical death/thrash, delivering and abandoning ideas at a near grindcore rate while bringing to mind big names like Voivod and Atheist and Vektor and anyone else combining science fiction with metal in both lyrics and sound. They also play with an undeniable glee that ought to make you picture Edward Van Halen riffing away with that unforgettable smile of his. Riffs are spry, bass is in constant motion, solos rip and shred, drums blast away, and the gruff vocals are delivered with personality and charisma. The constant onslaught, shifts, impeccable production, and clear impression that the band really, really loves this stuff help the album move, and yes, seem much shorter than those 78-plus minutes.
However, because of those constant shifts, and a shortage of real unifying motifs, it’s quite difficult to distinguish between the songs themselves; it mostly feels like one very long piece of music. In fact, you’re most likely to notice differences within the songs, as opposed to between them.
But within the songs, hot damn you’ll find some wicked stuff. Apologies for the timestamps, but when the shortest song is almost 9 and a half minutes, this is the only way: In “Cryogenically Frozen,” there’s the rolling brutality of the brief chorus and slick, sassy solo at about 5:10; “Stratocumulus Evergaol” contains approximately 12,000 ideas, all of them at worst solid, but really wins when it emphasizes the need to really rock out (slippery stuff at 6:25 and the extra Van Halen vibes at 16:00); there’s an absolute deluge of killer soloing in “Hyperspace Topography,” not to mention that Demilichian string hopping at about 7:15; “Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)” is loaded with latter-era Voivodisms; and the title track uses all of the band’s tools while also bringing in Mike Browning for a little theremin, just to add to the sci-fi vibes. It’s a lot of album, but nearly everything displays excellence in both riffcraft and performance.
And yet, again, each song not really feeling like a contained unit undeniably affects the flow of the full record a little. Even at their substantial lengths, songs don’t so much end as they have “to be continued” moments to serve the lyrical story. In fact, one gets the impression that much of the record’s excessive run time might have come from forming the music to the words, which comes at the expense of some depth and efficiency (especially the latter). Even the closing title track doesn’t arrive at some raging climax in the music – at least not the type you’d expect after an album of this length – instead sounding like it’s happy to let the words close out this sci-fi story. That bothers critic brain a little, but by this point fan brain has been so thoroughly rocked as to not care much.
So the battle of brains rages on with each successive spin of Overspace & Supertime. I will admit that the more I listen, the less critic brain is bothered by the more riff salad aspects of the album and the more the flow sets in. After all, when all the ingredients are so tasty, the whole has to be pretty good, right? In this case, yes, absolutely, and it has to be repeated how insanely cool these ingredients are across the entire album. Cryptic Shift has crafted a gargantuan record that probably won’t appeal to every metalhead out there, but just about everyone absolutely needs to hear it at least once. Your ultimate opinion of it will undoubtedly depend on your taste for this much tech metal – not to mention how much you’ve been infected by critic brain – but there’s no denying that at least on a surface level, this record is a blast.
