Your view on the word retro is likely to stem from life experience. It might bring back cringe memories of your parents hideous floral furniture. Or the time when you wore flared trousers or sported a glorious mullet with no sense of self-consciousness. Under the right circumstances however, it can remind you of something truly spectacular from the recent past. In the form of Crypta, on their debut album Echoes of the Soul, we have a large slice of devastatingly filthy old school blackened death metal.
Formed in June 2019, the Brazilian and Dutch combo in Crypta consists of former Nervosa members Fernanda Lira on vocals and bass and Luana Dametto on drums, plus guitarists Sonia Anubis (Cobra Spell, Ex-Burning Witches) and Tainá Bergamaschi (Ex-Hagbard). Their résumés are certainly filled with pedigree, but the whole being greater than the sum of the parts is on full display here. Echoes of the Soul has no mainstream focus, no pretentious bullshit, just full bore death metal brutality.
Fernanda Lira pulls absolutely no punches on her vocal delivery. Adding a strong black metal flavour, in the typical “singing like being strangled to death” way that typifies black metal. It fits perfectly in to the relentless nature of the album. Personally, the stand out performance on Echoes of the Soul is the stick work by Luana Dametto. The tone is absolutely perfect, the unrefined and raw sound creating the necessary tension on some glorious blast beats, and really sits as the backbone for the entire album.
Penultimate track Dark Night of the Soul, is the standout track, and showcases Crypta at their devastating best. The aformentioned drum work is top tier, mixing simple blast beat rhythms with creative fills. Sonia and Tainá put on an absolute riff-fest, with awesome solos and a haunting melodic outro to perfectly set up the final track From the Ashes. 42 minutes just flies by with the relentless pace of the album, begging for repeated listening.
It can’t be easy releasing a debut album when the world is shut off to the live stage. However, one way to get around that is to just release a fucking awesome debut album. With Echoes of the Soul, Crypta have pulled no punches, let raw emotion and talent stand front and centre, and showcased a devastating ability to take us back to an era before the polish and pristine of modern metal. Now we just need the live scene to get back on track around the world to feel the wrath of spectacular face melting death metal.
Score: 9/10
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