Shades of Sorrow by Crypta | Album Review

On their sophomore effort, the Brazilian quartet unleash a (refined) hell of their own making.

Artwork sourced from: Bandcamp | Credit: Raul Campos/Napalm Records

• Genre: Death Metal
• Members: Fernanda Lira, Luana Dametto, Tainá Bergamaschi, Jéssica di Falchi
• Length: 52 Minutes
• Label: Napalm Records
• Released: 2023

Once More into the Crypt(a)

My journey to Crypta began a few years before their debut album, 2021s Echoes of the Soul, with the discovery of Brazilian thrash outfit, Nervosa. Revealed to me during a good-ol witching hour YT sesh, I found myself done in by their viciously precise, snarling breed of flensing thrash. I locked down most of their limited discography, including the then-announced Downfall of Mankind (2018), excited to have caught a band in their relative early stages and eager to grow alongside them as a fan. Imagine my dismay when, in 2020, it came out that two of the three members had left. Surely, this was the end, I thought.

Turned out, no! 2021 saw guitarist, sole member, and founder Prika Amaral rebuild Nervosa in record time to unleash the excellent Perpetual Chaos, while bassist/vocalist Fernanda Lira and drummer Luana Dametto conjured the death metal monster (and subject of this review) Crypta into being with their ripping debut, Echoes of the Soul. Where disaster struck, new life had risen from the ashes. Suddenly, I had two new, young, exciting bands to journey with. Could anything be better?

Well, of course: new music! And that’s just what Crypta delivered in this, the year of our gourd, with Shades of Sorrow — 52 minutes of howling, finger-shredding, bass-kicking, pit-churning death metal. After a brief, albeit somewhat unnecessary, piano intro, the album establishes itself with fervor as Fernanda’s throat-shredding howls tear apart the veil of “Dark Clouds”, the rest of the band blasting off around her. Across its near-5 minute runtime, it rips and thunders across a wicked arsenal of compositional shifts, backboned by Fernanda’s lumbering bass and Luana’s wildfire drumming, while guitarists Tainá Bergamaschi and Jéssica di Falchi riff-n-tear until it is done.

Band photo sourced from: Bandcamp | Credit: Napalm Records

It’s a winning formula, one that they execute flawlessly across 10 of the album’s 13 tracks (“The Aftermath”, “The Limbo”, and “The Closure” all serve as atmospheric instrumentals opening, bridging, and closing Shades, respectively). Sure, some tracks have more staying power than others; I’m particularly fond of “Dark Clouds”, “The Other Side of Anger”, and “Trial of Traitors”, but there’s hardly anything constituting a bad song on here, and pretty much every cut has at minimum an element to it that hooks my ear — usually something involving Luana Dametto. In a genre where drumming can be dialed in to an efficient robotic cruelty, delivering ruthless blast beats and concrete-shattering double-bass, Luana attacks her kit with an organic, bouncy kineticism, adding a joyful layer of human vibrancy. Don’t get me wrong — I love the Archspires and Signs of the Swarms of the world. But, it’s nice to hear some death metal drumming that sounds, well… playable. It brings a flavor to the table that just spices things up an extra notch, and drops Luana amongst my favorite drummers as a result. If Shades has any weak moments to hold up, it’s in the ambient instrumentals — but they’re honestly so short-lived and innocuous that it feels like nitpicking to even bring them up.

I’ll admit, despite my enjoyment of their debut, Echoes of the Soul, I didn’t return to it much after my inaugural time with it. Something about it lacked that “it” factor that’s so necessary — yet so ephemeral — in pushing an album to the level of “inescapable”. I’m willing to partially blame this on Sleep Token, whose album, This Place Will Become Your Tomb, had released the same year and subsequently monopolized my ears. And while 2023 sees me in a similar boat with Take Me Back to Eden usurping an unholy amount of my time since its arrival back in May, I find Shades of Sorrow holding strong where its predecessor struggled. It hasn’t harangued my listening the way Sleep Token has (again), but nonetheless it’s thriving on my playlist; accompanying me on my walks, my writing, painting, gaming, etcetera. It’s not that the album sounds markedly different than its predecessor, but they’ve absolutely tapped a vein, and their refined mixture just hits a bit stronger this time around. Shades of Sorrow blisters with exuberance and energy, spit and grit, deployed with razor-blade precision. A gnarly follow-up to a solid debut that proves Crypta means business… and that sometimes an ending is simply a beginning we can’t see yet.

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