Odious Mortem's website describes their sound as employing “technical, dark, and experimental aspects of the death metal genre.” When I think death metal I think Nile, Suffocation, maybe even Slayer. Odious Mortem are what Slayer might sound like if you replaced Kerry King with a jet engine. Vaguely reminiscent of early Fear Factory and Dillinger Escape Plan, for the most part Cryptic Implosion just feels long-winded. I mean, let's take a sample lyric:
“Cumulative idelogies the convergence of intentions. Forced schizophrenia by these vast abstractions of life disguised by false utility.”
This sort of foolishness goes on and on and it just leaves me exasperated. Not confused or impressed; just shaking my head and wondering if the next track will have anything different to offer. I know Carcass did the whole big words thing too (“Brittle testes eroded in hot, corrosive succus”) but at least they were cohesive. The album even ends on a coolly cosmological note, à la Cult of Luna, yet any potential enigma is lost in the preceding assault. It's all suitably extreme enough to satisfy those who crave this kind of off-the-hookiness, but I'm left wondering why they even bothered putting breaks between the identical-sounding songs.
