[Review] Mandroid of Krypton - ‘Cosmic Sarcophagus’ LP.
Author: Brady.
Released: 29th Nov, 2024 via MTAF Records.
Ethereal, cosmic progressive thrash with a slice of blackened-lemon tang. Yum.
Fans of Voivod? Get in here!
Mandroid of Krypton - Cosmic Sarcophagus
Full Album Streaming Link (see bottom of review for more artist links), Courtesy of The Psyfrost on Youtube:
Released on 29th of November, 2024 via MTAF Records, this is one of many, many album reviews that’ve been sitting in the hopper on my end as host for a while. The whole death of a website at 6pm on NYE thing has really derailed a lot of similar pieces I was keen on getting out earlier.
But hey, better late than never - amirite, fam?
This here’s an interesting album.
Overall, it’s a brilliant slice of progressive thrash, with decidedly blackened bends, nooks and crannies throughout. Plus, they’re from Switzerland and, for a country so consistently written-off as being all about political neutrality, alps and cheese, Mandroid are exemplary of their countrymen’s knack for forward-thinking metal. See also - Coroner, Tryptikon, Celtic Frost, Zeal & Ardour, Samael, et al.
See below for a fantastic sampler-dish to accompany your Cosmic Sarcophagus main-course:
On paper, it’s exactly my jam, and for the most part it really, really is. There were one or two elements, likely personal taste-influenced, that slightly marred the experience for me, which I’ll refer to moreso in the conclusion of this review.
Let’s start off strong, shall we? Just like the album itself.
In the day and age of everyone-is-apparently prog-something, you can be forgiven for letting out a slight ‘here we go’ exhale of hesitancy in pressing play on a record touted as ‘progressive thrash’. Fortunately, opener ‘Deep Resistance’ errs hard towards the latter, with urgency and readiness. Phew, no 12-minute Petrucci-inspired scale-run solo to start off? Good.
Plodding at a steady backbeat-march atop sheets of thrash stomp, drummer Romain Graf and bassist Tim Robert-Charrue employ a simplistic, martial pace to allow guitarists Sylvain Charbonnaz and Gabriel Farine (also on vocal duties) to eke out discordant arpeggios and sheets of tremolo riffage. It’s a spindly fracturing from there, however it’s employed deliberately and to good effect. Gabriel’s half-wail, half-soaring melodic vocals are reminiscent of Aussies Witchskull, and the floaty dynamic just adds to that feeling of total expansiveness.
‘The Waltz of Death’ picks up where the opening track left off vocally, but musically - things start to shift and splinter, in a way that feels both bold but measured. Typically Swiss-metal, then! There’s potency in the thrash meanderings here, adjoined by those very Voivod-coded strains of dischordant progressions, fretboard bounces and the bands’ own employment of a little extra blackened salt-and-pepper, and even some blasts! So far, so good, honestly.
It’s about mid-way through title track ‘Cosmic Sarcophagus’ that I notice myself having a little emotional distance from the vocal performance. They’re not bad or poorly performed in any measure; in fact, I quite enjoy the sneering wail accompanying the bands’ perpetual and labyrinthine riff-meanderings. It may be the mix, it may be that there’s little variation from said vocal dynamic, but it’s at this point I found myself starting to drift from what felt like a peripheral adjunct to the otherwise tonally dynamic and complex riffing underneath.
Thankfully, my issues seem to have been remediated for the remainder of the album onwards, as both Gabriel and band choose to employ both rhythmic and vocal changes that snap me back from whatever esoteric, Bootes-Void size meanderings the band and I were soaring through. ‘Fallen Angels’, for instance, introduces some downright harsh snarls at such a sudden juncture that I almost lose sight of the fact we’re now in what essentially amounts to a solid, chugging breakdown riff. As if to tease even further, it’s after this point that the band start ramping up the naughty-child-being-chased-through-a-maze gleeful mischief - the riffs take a turn for the fractal, whilst the rhythm section and vocals alike feel pulled between two binary stars. It’s to great effect, and certainly snaps me from my reverie.
Not too much pseudo-intellectual ponderance needs to occur for follow-up tracks ‘Mountains of Fear’ and ‘Drag, Drag Sisyphus’ - both neatly and effectively employ the ethos of their nations’ panache for tight but spellbinding progressive thrash. Clocking in at just two minutes apiece and clearly tracks in their own right, I had to double-take and reconcile that wasn’t actually a single song. I see this as a good thing; there’s so many intra/inter-song dynamic changes through this LP that I can’t help but reminisce about Meshuggah’s Catch 33 as an adjacent example. That is, a song technically split into disparate tracks, but both chaotic and webbed enough together that the album truly feels like a standalone Big Song Thing. Kudos, really - it’s not easy to achieve this when employing themes of floatiness, macro-scale cosmic terror and the like atop prog employing both thrash, black and death metal gumbo-soup too.
Gig photo, from the bands’ official Facebook account (see below for link).
There’s some additional snarls and barks through ‘Asteroid Brigade’ amidst that forlorn melodic wail vocally, and again I find my attention planted more firmly in place to Farina’s performance. The interesting dual-tapping riff that repeats as a motif through this track also helps to solidify and ground a sense of structure amidst the complex webbing of riff-work around said technique.
It’s as this moment I also find myself almost longing to have Sylvain’s bass-work brought more out into the fore, as I’m getting hints of low-end trickery that the production slightly obfuscates under layers of distortion. That said, the adherence to Romain’s equally stoic and playful work on the skins also can’t be faulted. As a bass player myself, as much as I am ALL about fretless fretboard gymnastics in my progressive thrash/death metal, it’s become such a common trope at the moment that the lack of primacy in that regard is, I’ll admit, refreshing here.
Overall, the band have demarcated those lines between roles and its’ clear good heed has been paid not to have the rhythm-duo be perpetually chasing after the serious rabbithole of licks, effects and chaotic chord progressions we see in the above track, and follow-up ‘Veterans of The Cosmic War’. A few sucker-punch moments here really slam into you alongside the riffs, a cosmic hand gut-punching you from the accretion disk of that unsettling but also weirdly soothing aural black hole ahead.
Concluding this brief but intelligent and mischievous album, the full gamut of stylistic implications woven throughout are roared to life in closer ‘Land of Ghosts’. Cranking the thrash’n’tremolo up a notch, it’s a brief but intensity-fuelled outro which serves as a fantastic reminder - “yeah, we’re here to dazzle and display some theatrics, but we’re also absolutely here to crush skulls.”
Overall, a common complaint I’ve noted on the album wholesale is moreso around the shorter track lengths. For me, I think this is absolutely a strength - there’s a very strong punk influence underpinning the album, and stretching the veritably mind-jarring maze of tight, jagged riff-work for more ambient or interlude-style shenanigans would arguably detract from the experience.
As mentioned, if I have gripes about anything, it’s that the first half of the album employs a very staccato and almost monotonal vocal range. Not poor in terms of performance, but I certainly noticed myself gravitating back to Earth a lot more to the vocal elements once Mr. Farina started really pulling out extra bits and bobs from an impressive drawer of vocal techniques. That said - who are we to judge, either, really?! The fact anyone can pull these riffs off and do vocals at all is mighty impressive.
As a whole, Cosmic Sarcophagus is a very enjoyable and fresh take on progressive thrash, whilst also paying clear homage to space-oriented forebears of old. Any small gripes I have with the album themselves are well addressed through the latter half, and they’re not a fault on poor writing or performance either!
Someone who is not-Vektor needs to come in and muscle on a largely-ignored…. space (pun very much intended) in the thrash metal scene. Leave the pizza-thrash to Municipal Waste, Pizza Death and the like. Ultimately, I’m glad these guys have set out into an impenetrable stellar orbit with bullet-belts affixed to their spacesuits, and I’m looking forward to see what expansive realms of our Universe we’re taken to next. In a proggy, thrashy, blackened spaceship.