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Let’s all be honest with ourselves here – who thought that Cryptopsy would drop one of the best records of their entire career over 30 years into it? I sure as hell didn’t, especially considering the last two decades, which, let’s face it, were a little bit rocky.

It all began back in 2008 with then-new vocalist Matt McGachy‘s debut with Cryptopsy, The Unspoken King. That album veered really hard into deathcore, and if you were around at the time, you know the backlash was immediate and brutal. Fans were not on board, and Cryptopsy spent years trying to shake the stigma that the album left behind.

Then the tide started to turn back in Cryptopsy‘s favor with their self-titled 2012 album. Independently released and proudly death metal to its core, that record felt like a proper course correction. It brought back the brutality, layered in some fascinating progressive touches, and served notice to fans that Cryptopsy still totally had teeth and they were still very much in touch with who they were as a band. That momentum carried through with the two Book of Suffering EPs, both of which were punishing, technically dazzling, and well-received across the board. Cryptopsy were totally back in the game.

Then came 2023’s As Gomorrah Burns, their first full-length album in 11 years and debut and only album on Nuclear Blast. On paper, it had everything: violence, technical wizardry, all the classic Cryptopsy elements that you’d expect from the band and hope for at this point. But something didn’t quite land, at least for me. The mix was oddly clean and overproduced, sapping some of the grit and chaos that fans craved from the band.

The writing was very solid and the execution was pretty good, but it just felt too polished – it felt too clean to be a Cryptopsy record. But none of that matters now, because An Insatiable Violence is here and it rips. It absolutely rips.

“The Nimis Adoration” wastes no time in kicking in your teeth and letting you know that this record is not here to mess around. What starts off sounding like a relatively straightforward riff with some cymbal chokes quickly mutates into something far more unhinged. Cryptopsy immediately launches into a barrage of wrist-shattering riffs and off-kilter rhythms, shifting through time signatures so fast you might actually need an AI-powered calculator just to keep up.

The track refuses to settle down, constantly stirring the proverbial pot with wild tempo shifts and tuplet-laced madness. Just as you think you’re getting your bearings at any point within these first two minutes, Cryptopsy pulls the rug out completely. Then everything snaps into place around the two-minute mark with a refreshingly straightforward blackened section, giving you just enough space to catch your breath before the band throws you right back into the fire. What follows is a ripping dual-guitar shredfest, a brief but brilliant breakdown into a bass and drum driven riffing thing, and then a return to the earlier rhythmic maelstrom to top everything off.

The chaotic style bits come back for one final haymaker to the face, the tempo slows down to a menacing crawl, and by the end you’re wondering what the hell just happened. Welcome to An Insatiable Violence. Cryptopsy is not here to mess around anymore.

“Until There’s Nothing Left” takes a different approach than the all-out blitz of the opener. It’s less of a maelstrom and more of a churn, and it’s a smart move too and one that shows Cryptopsy‘s keen sense of pacing throughout this record. Rather than battering the listener with constant whiplash, they dial things back just enough to really let the riffs breathe, and in doing so they find this perfect inverse relationship between brain-melting technicality and legitimately catchy, hook-laden songwriting.

This is Cryptopsy firing on all cylinders. The songs are vicious, dynamic, and razor sharp. The performances are some of the most feral and locked-in that they’ve ever put to tape. Sure, the mix still leans a little bit cleaner than I’d prefer, but it doesn’t hold the record back or anything like that. The songwriting is too strong, too focused, and too relentless for that to even matter, honestly. Cryptopsy is here to prove that they’re not just surviving – they’re still evolving as artists, still dominating the death metal space, and somehow, still getting better.

“Dead Eyes Replete” solidifies that Cryptopsy has stepped up their songwriting and pulls some similar stylistic moves. Cryptopsy hits you with something super dense and technical, and then seamlessly transitions into something very melodic and straightforward, which is a move that they pull a lot on this record and again, it’s really smart and keeps you engaged.

“Dead Eyes Replete” is further proof that Cryptopsy has seriously leveled up their songwriting game. The band continues their signature trick of balancing suffocating technicality with moments of unexpected clarity. Just when you think you’re buried under an avalanche of riffs, the track pivots and all of a sudden you’re back out in the sunlight – but you’re still kind of afraid that another avalanche is coming. And it’s coming.

What’s also very striking to me at this point – and keep in mind we’re only three songs in – is how democratic the mix feels. Everyone in Cryptopsy is given space to shine. Bassist Oli Pinnard comes out swinging with a handful of very standout lines that are gloriously high in the mix, adding depth and clarity rather than just getting buried beneath the guitars or serving as the low end because you’d need low end on a record.

And then there’s drummer Flo Mounier, who might actually just be a drum machine in human skin. I’m not sure if anyone’s checked that, but someone should check that. Someone should call that guy. Flo, if you’re watching this – are you a robot?

And then of course, Christian Donaldson continues to spit out riffs that somehow manage to be both surgical and completely chaotic, and McGachy delivers one of his strongest vocal performances to date. It’s commanding, it’s varied, and it’s totally vicious.

Just when you think you’ve finally gotten a grip on An Insatiable Violence and kinda what this album is going to be doing, “Fools Last Acclaim” stumbles in with a warped sense of rhythm and really throws you for a loop. Built on a blend of steady grooves and jarring, choppy accents, it feels purposefully unstable – like the ground is shifting beneath your feet.

Unlike its predecessors, this track isn’t here to dazzle with technical finesse or compositional twists. It is purely here to destroy you. And if the opening 40 seconds of the song weren’t heavy enough, Cryptopsy flips the script and dives into a completely different feel. What’s clever, though, is how they gradually reintroduce elements from the opening section. Bit by bit, the chaos creeps back in from that otherwise pretty stable structure until the original theme is fully resurrected, seemingly more unhinged than before.

Again, it’s really, really cool, but very subtle writing. “Fools Last Acclaim” feels like what should absolutely be the turning point for any listener – the moment where even the most skeptical Cryptopsy fans have to admit that yeah, this album is pretty damn good. We’re halfway through this record, and the band is still playing like you just hit play on track 1. There’s no letting up. There’s no filler. There’s no coasting on what came before it. This is just pure, sustained violence.

The second half of An Insatiable Violence starts off very different than anything you’ve heard up to this point, thanks to “The Art of Emptiness”. “The Art of Emptiness” opens in pretty unfamiliar territory. There are these grand and drawn-out chugged chords, relatively restrained drumming, and what sounds like spoken word layered over a chorus of low, guttural growls lurking just beneath the surface. It’s spacious, but it’s also ominous as hell.

But as you’ve probably come to expect from Cryptopsy at this point on this album, they’re playing the long game. Before the 2-minute mark hits, the band gradually ramps things up with some heavier drums and sharper riffing and rising intensity, until it all snaps into a brand new tempo and a solid groove underlining one of the catchiest riffs this whole album has to offer just pops out of nowhere. Even better, Cryptopsy doesn’t just throw that riff away – they bring it back quite a few times and use it as this thematic anchor throughout the whole song.

What “The Art of Emptiness” really showcases is Cryptopsy‘s borderline supernatural ability to really structure chaos. There’s not a single second in this song that feels unresolved or tossed in for shock value. Every shift, every return to a theme feels earned, feels logically composed. If you want to hear how to mix a flood of contrasting ideas but still sound laser-focused, this song right here should be your blueprint.

“Our Great Deception” feels like the rotting, twisted twin of “The Art of Emptiness”. It opens with a moment of eerie clean guitar calm before the shambling beast within totally rears its head. Cryptopsy tears that calm to pieces, unveiling one of the most structurally complex and sonically punishing tracks on this whole album – which is saying something, because my god, everything on this album is punishing.

You get blasts of blackened ferocity, a full-on melodic death metal passage, some real “whole band hitting on the downbeat”-styled ass beaters of riffs, and I think the slowest breakdown on the record is in this song just for good measure. Because why not? If you’re going to destroy the place, you might as well really destroy the place.

And then there are the final two tracks – “Embrace the Nihility” and “Malicious Needs”. Both tracks incorporate some serious groove-heavy elements, with “Embrace the Nihility” even throwing in a blegh-heralded breakdown and some Decapitated-meets-Meshuggah rhythmic things. It’s the final all-out bludgeoning before Cryptopsy pulls the curtain back for the final track and reveals something far more massive and grand.

“Malicious Needs” is a true culmination of this record and the closer of the record, which is perfect. It’s everything An Insatiable Violence has been building toward, turned up to 11. The breakdowns are longer and more punishing, the technical passages are razor-sharp, the pacing somehow feels even more urgent, and the transitions between sections are as sudden and brutal as anything else you’ve heard on this record.

It’s like the entire album’s chaos has been distilled into one final unrelenting statement. It becomes one final shift because Cryptopsy really just has to show you that they are capable of doing everything extremely well. After the final full-band pummel, Cryptopsy descends into a harrowing two-minute outro that pulls from death doom and black metal in equal measure.

The vocals stretch into these really long shrieks, the atmosphere turns grim, and everything slows to a crushing, almost cinematic close. “Malicious Needs” is an authoritative end to this record.

With An Insatiable Violence, Cryptopsy has reasserted themselves as one of the most vital forces in extreme music today. The record feels like the culmination of everything they’ve been chasing for the past 15 years: raw aggression, precision songwriting, and the kind of unrelenting intensity that made their early work so iconic. But at the same time, this isn’t a throwback. This isn’t an apology letter to fans. This isn’t Cryptopsy saying, “Oh hey, we know that you like the old stuff so we’re just going to try to do that as much as possible.” This is Cryptopsy in 2025 – just learning from everything that they’ve done prior, and the results are awesome.

An Insatiable Violence is an easy 9 out of 10 for me. If you haven’t heard this record yet, stop what you’re doing right now and go fix that. And if you have heard this record, well, odds are you’re thinking about spinning it again – so I’ll let you go do that right now.