Whisper Supremacy

Cryptopsy | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 22, 1998)
• Original Release Date: September 22, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Century Media
• ASIN: B00000DCPY
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,359 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The epitome of brutal, technical, and conventional metal., June 14, 2003

By 

TheBlackSun (Canton. Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whisper Supremacy (Audio CD)

Rarely do I come across an album that is astonishing in the pure speed, baffling with in it's time signatures and rhythms, mind-numbing in it's complexity, creative in it's songwriting, but at the very same time, makes me want to rip someone's face off.

To call this a death metal album hardly seems to do it justice, being that most death metal is dominated with monotonous growls, lame, masterbatory speed strumming, and recycled drum beats.

This album, although fits under the genre of "death metal", hardly fits any of the traits I listed above.

Drums: What words come to mind when hearing Flo's drumming on this album? Fast, intricate, genius, creative, but that does not even begin to describe it. He is all over his set every second of the album, there are no "down" or "mellow" parts to this album, there are only a couple seconds in which you are able to breathe before you are pummeled to death with a furious double bass, hyper blast beats, and spastic fills. His parts are unlike anything I've ever heard. His double bass rhythms are fast and complex, his fills are frequent and unpredictable, he utilizes odd jazzy drum parts that somehow fit in perfectly and his blast beats are the equalvilant to being shot with an M16. You can not go more than ten seconds listening to this album without hearing something either insanely fast or creative and complicated.

Guitar: Never have I heard the entire fretboard of a guitar be so badly abused. The dual guitar assault on this is relentless. Alex Auburn and Jon Levasseur churnout crushing riffs that dance all over the fretboard and keep up with Flo perfectly, the solos compliment the songs well, and are extremely well thought out, even though there are more moshy parts occasionally, and sometimes semi-melodic parts, the guitar parts NEVER go weak on this album.

Bass: Rarely can you find a bassist that can keep up with a great guitarist. But this is one of the many novelties found on this album. Eric can keep up with these fast punishing riffs, and even throws in a couple slap bass parts.

Sounds like a great album doesn't it? But wait, there's more.

Mike Disalvo is a brutal, rapid, unique, and creative voice, he fits the band perfectly. His somewhat abstract lyrics are wrapped in a brutal growl (that isn't retardedly low), that shifts harshness and pitch somewhat subtely, while adding an extra layer of complex rhythms over the already insanely technical music.

Overall song-writing: You usually never hear a band go through so many riffs in a single song, and go through so many speeds. At first listen, these riffs may seem randomly thrown together, but if you listen to the album about 30 times, (that's how complicated it is), you start to see how ingeniously these songs were written and put together. For instance, on White Worms (one of my favorites of the album), all the madness stops for one moment, Mike let's loose a brutal low scream as it suddenly goes into a breakdownish part, only to pick back up into a hyper blast part.

There are so many other parts on the album, I could write paragraphs upon paragraphs about how genious this album is, but you have to hear it to believe it.

If you consider yourself a fan of anything heavy or technical, there is NO reason why you shouldn't buy this album.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most technical, brutal album ever!, March 15, 2000

By 

cyanobacteria (Thermal Vent) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whisper Supremacy (Audio CD)

Well, were do I start? I have listened to death metal since the first albums came out by Death and Morbid Angel. I have always looked for new bands who are "pushing the envelope of death metal". Death metal reached it's technical high point with the release of Suffocation's "Pierced From Within". Pretty much everything after that album did not bring any new developments into the death metal scene until this album. This album brought a level of technical ability, unknown speed and the added element of complete controlled CHOAS. The number of time changes and odd time signatures is mind blowing. Unlike most death metal drummers who have taken Morbid Angel drum technics and mainly play 3 or 4 speeds Flo(drummer) has taken the profiency of a jazz drummer mixed it up like a mad man and introduced hyper speed. The guitars are also insane with constant fret movement that makes you feel like you have just consumed 5 pots of coffee. The production is well balanced so all instuments are heard. The vocalist sounds like a man possessed. It is amazing to think they recorded this album in June of 1998. Since then we have had a few hyperblast releases by band such as Angelcorpse, Hate Eternal and Krisiun to name a few. All of these albums were very fast but all were sped up old school(Morbid Angelish) death metal. Cryptopsy will be going into the studio soon to record the follow-up to this album. I am quite confident it will (again) be the most brutal album ever. I give this album a 5(and overall most brutal album to date) but I do have a few bone to pick with it. The bass could be a little more up in the mix. This would add some bottom end, which is lacking, to the production. The vocalist could add a little more range to his vocals and the lead guitarist needs to speed up his solos to the level of Angelcorpse or Krisiun's lead guitarists. BUYER BEWARE: Buy this album only if you are into EXTREME EXTREME DEATH METAL.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars brutalicious, December 8, 2003

By 

Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whisper Supremacy (Audio CD)

Death metal is mostly useless to me. Most of the bands seem to get their priorities backwards and rather than using musicality to further their brutality, they try too hard to be as brutal as possible but fail because of poor starting points like straight-up mediocrity or too much image. Generally, grindcore out-brutalizes death metal in every way and tends towards more sonic profundity. Bands like Cannibal Corpse are so ridiculous that you might as well send them back to the jungle, where they belong with the other monkeys. HOWEVER, some death metal bands, like Cryptopsy, raise the bar for their genre by several notches and stand alone as impressive groups.

Quite simply, Cryptopsy is an onslaught. Superkinetically fast, relentlessly punishing, stomach-churningly brutal and in the end nigh fatal. There are no reprieves, each song is being one crushing assault after another, with a melodic riff or solo phrase here and there. And yet behind that seemingly impenetrable wall of homogenous, black, spiky noise (a consequence of the production style) is deceptive complexity that makes each song distinctive and interesting. This is an impressive roster of musicians with chops to spare, the first among equals being the exhausting Flo Mournier, the king of devastating hyper-blastbeats (one has to at least admire his _endurance_!). The four instrumentalists grapple the fractured portions of their shrapnel deluge and connect them into a tight unit of clockwork precision, rife with integrated polyrhythms, breakneck metrical displacements, and wacky meters. Roaring through it all is the blood-spewing vocalist Mike DiSalvo (cool metal name, but not as cool as "Lord Worm," eh?), whose voice fits the proceedings nicely. One of the most interesting attributes of Cryptopsy is how they get MORE brutal with more listening. Instead of "getting used to" the music, the closer I listen the more it becomes apparent just _how_ that brutality is crafted. greater comprehension = greater brutality!

Why only four stars? I must admit I don't like this album as much as many other people do. On the whole I think _None So Vile_ is a more musically successful album than this one. Perhaps Cryptopsy's bag of tricks is a little on the limited side (on this album anyway), and they lack the sheer power and sonic force that would put them up on the next level (might be that fuzzy production). I haven't heard their other albums, although I am interested in doing so. Cryptopsy is a band well above the dull majority of their death metal peers.