With "Celestial Death" Dutch tech-thrashers Cryptosis have released their second album which is much more diverse than its predecessor (read reviews here). A lot of more metal influences are to be found on the album but what is left are the cryptic song titles. I had a nice chat with Frank (bass) about the upcoming plans and of course the album itself. Enjoy reading!

Michael

Hi Frank, how are you?

All fine here, thank you.

Your new album "Celestial Death" was just released – what are your expectations?

It is hard to name expectations but for us it's a big step forwards compared to what we did with "Bionic Swarm" in terms of songwriting, concept and sound. Right now we also have done quite a lot of interviews and the first numbers of soundchecks and reviews are coming in and it's already a lot better than for the previous album. I think what you want as a band we already succeeded and now we hope for the best. It's like a snowball that is starting to roll down the mountain.

The title is quite contrary – what do you want to express with that one? Is it some kind of pro-euthanasia title?

It's a concept album and at the moment we are basically at the dawn of a new technological age. Concepts like AI are very popular these days and thirty years ago it was like a really futuristic concept and these days kids use it at school to do their homework. It is such a short time and there have been really huge advancements since then. We are just at the beginning of something totally new and there are so many things like identity in "Faceless Matter". People are on their phones more and more and are basically connected to the internet 24/7. At this moment we do it with mobile phones but it will change in the future. "Celestial Death", the music and the lyrics are basically our interpretation of this time. With the title, we wanted something that sounds like the music. I think we succeeded quite well with this, I read somewhere in the YouTube comments that someone says "this style of music I'd say is celestial death". So I thought we did a really good job and this was a really good description.

Do you think it is the death of mankind we used to know?

Yes, death of the old beliefs and the world we know. It's like a new revelation.

Yes, it is really crazy with all that  VR and Chat GPT and stuff…

Yes, it's a simple example how it already came this far in such a small time. When you compare it to how old the world is and it is just the beginning.

Musically it is much easier to follow your songs because they aren't that bulky and Voivodesque. Is your plan to get more fans that way?

Well, the thing about "Bionic Swarm" is that Laurents did quite a lot of the song writing and he is a really technically skilled guitar player. For this album he had some changes in his personal life in the past years so the main focus on the song writing was more on me. I just can't play all this technical shit and for me it's important to have a song that has a nice groove and you can headbang to. I don't care if the guitar doesn't show off, for me the guitar is not the main instrument. I can play it but I don't want it to be like a solo instrument, it is just a part of the whole. Many of the ideas came from me and when I started working on it at some point I just wrote some stuff that felt good to me. Laurents and I worked on the stuff and he put his fingerprint on it and on the previous album it was the other way round. That's basically how this album came to existence. It wasn't really like trying to do some commercial stuff.

Haha, it really isn't commercial stuff. With the instrumentals you have only two slower songs on the album. Did you want to go to your own limits with the super fast songs?

Not necessarily. Maybe the song "Cryptosphere" is a song that also could be on "Bionic Swarm" but mostly we just went for a cinematic approach. It should resonate on an emotional level with me as with listeners. So if it had this label it was good for us. When the guitar is sometimes more in the background it gives room for the drums to shine a bit more but it was never really the goal to show off like we did on "Bionic Swarm". Once we started writing the songs like the more we went into that direction of letting the music show off instead of a single instrument. Once we got into that process it became like the bar: if it is like this we can continue working on it, if not we have to make it better or change it.

Yeah, it sounds so super fast and extreme so my thought was that you might have reached your limits.

Yeah, definitely. At some point we have been playing quite a lot when we released "Bionic Swarm" and for us it became a bit boring to play super fast all the time so now we focused on nice melodies, grooves and atmosphere. That was a lot more important for us than just go 180 mph for 45 minutes.

It is obvious that you listen to a lot of black metal stuff also, listening to all that tremolo picking…

Yes, bands like Emperor, Dissection – this kind of black metal is what I like but I also like atmospheric stuff which doesn't really has a place in Cryptosis but maybe on the next album we can explore more of this. But we also listen to a lot of electronic music like Klaus Schultze or the 70s synthesizer stuff and I just want to incorporate everything I love in music into my own band.

You are a band that focuses on technical skills pretty much. How important is it for you to work like some sort of clockwork? I mean seeing you live is a really stunning event, to see how you exactly time with the videos on the stage for example.

You use some modern technology and you get creative with the opportunities and the stuff that it has. You see that in really big bands and then you think if they can do it, why can't we? So we just started thinking about how we can make it workable for us, in a small van on tour when you're not the headliner. So we started making this big idea like super small and tried to build it up in our own circumstances.

Do you have some special tricks for this perfect timing?

Yeah. I can tell you but then I would have to kill you (laughs). No it's just the same technology that most metal bands are using these days and the only thing is that we connected a video to this. When we first engineered some ideas we saw from huge bands we thought about how to use it easily. It is really simple, it is some quick time video that we play, no fancy software or anything. Basically it's super low-fi and sometimes when we play in a bigger venue and they see how we set this up they start to laugh a bit. But for you as a visitor it looks really professional. It's something that has to work with, with the money and the situation that you have. Sometimes backstage is really small and it has to fit in every setting.

Another thing that I found quite remarkable when I saw you the first time was that Marco did some advertisement for his drum lessons – this is something quite unusual I'd say.

When we change over we have to check if everything works accordingly and we thought what to put on the screens. He is trying to make a living as a drummer and he has about 60 students that he teaches drum lessons, so why not help him out a bit and advertise the stuff too? People who are at the concert potentially could be interested in learning to play drums as well.

Coming to the lyrics – did you read a book since our last interview or do you still draw your inspiration from TV series?

I'm so busy with all the stuff. I put my heart and soul into the music and everything that comes with it and some people have more leisure time. I try to express myself in this way, my girlfriend reads a lot of books but I can't find the time and cannot sit on a chair or a sofa for a long time. I always want to get out and do things and work on things. To answer your question – no (laughs).

I remember you told me that you were inspired by that series "Black Mirror". Do you still get your inspiration from that and from every day stories you see on TV?

When we write an album, first we write the music and then we write the lyrics. It usually takes two or three years to write an album and I am constantly collecting stuff like research, news articles. In the weirdest places you find the best inspiration and just collect it in my Google Drive notes and once we have all the songs I go in my notes and check all the things I have. Sometimes it's just titles, sometimes it's a whole research and I check what would match with the vibe of which song or which song could use this title. Then I connect these things, throw away a lot and from that point I let my imagination flow. I try to connect as much as I can with the music or in an abstract way. Basically I try to make sense between words and the music.

You are also working as photographer and video director (if I'm right you did the last Helleruin video) – when did you start with that and what takes more time, music or art?

Actually I work as a freelance graphic designer, do logos, branding and this stuff for companies. Sometimes I do album arts, layout or whatever. I was invited to go on tour with Helleruin in 2023. I just got a camera second hand from a friend and started playing around with it, making recaps of these concerts. The friend of mine who gave me the camera, he has a very professional film production company, gave me some tips and taught me some stuff and after that I got more interested. I bought a serious camera and started building a portfolio, some bands saw this and hired me. I also do a lot of video work for the Dutch band Dool, usually concert recaps and festival stuff. From then the ball started rolling and my friend and I started a film production company together – F53 – and we do Eindhoven Metal Meeting, Graveland Festival and everything that is loud metal music. We did video clips for Bezerker Legion with Thomas from Hypocrisy and Alvin from Asphyx. For me it was a hobby that got out of hand and Jeroen makes a lot of commercial stuff for TV but we both like metal a lot and he doesn't have a platform to post all he does so we thought it would be good to do it together.

Also Marco is doing some side-jobs such as being drummer in In Aphelion and live drummer in many other bands. How does it affect the work in Cryptosis?

None at all. Laurens and I do 99% of the stuff in the band, promotion, web shop – all this lies in our hands and when we have a concert, Marco comes to our place, we go and have a good weekend. He does a lot with In Aphelion. They don't play live so often but they record albums from time to time.

I have seen you two times within the last two years, when will we meet again? I guess you're going out to promote the new album….

We will meet in Essen at "Return Of The Riff" festival at 31st May. There we play with Onslaught, Space Chaser and two other bands. We will also go on European tour with Onslaught in May and June and in July we're going on a Latin America tour with Artillery. We will do some shows in Denmark in autumn, I think we have a good schedule after the album release.

The final words are yours!

If you haven't listened to the album, please do. There is a bit of everything for everyone if you like black, thrash, death, symphonic. You can find everything. We write dark music, maybe you want to follow us and see you on the road and thank you for the interview!