Costa Rican death metal band SolarCrypt is a lone gun operation, with a single madman commanding the turrets of its sonic battery.
The project is described by its creator Jean Montero as being a tribute to the vile assault of bands like Incantation and Bolt Thrower, and while that rings true, it’s not the whole story. On Rot in the Multidimensional Sewer Jean musters an incredibly low and cryptic growl for his vocal performances—almost like a menacing, throaty murmur.
It is very much in the style of Markus Makkonen, formerly of Hooded Menace, or Mads Haarløv of Undergang, if he were practicing his vocal croaks while recovering from a voicebox surgery. The riffs are definitely of a large caliber variety on this release, and while they sound well oiled and ready to deal some serious damage, they also sound fittingly filthy- teeming with pathogens and contagious chord progressions and prepared to empty their epidemic fertilizing payloads into your ears and permitting festering resonance of these stringed stingers to curdle the pink porridge in your skull.
The drumming is probably the most impressive part of the contingent body of the work, as it keeps the tracks rolling at a militant pace while borrowing the concussive combustion of the rhythm section of German thrash titan Sodom in order to power up this apocalyptic war machine. SolarCrypt’s sound might be dissonant, but the band’s music actually comes from a place of empathy.
As Jean described to Decibel, the name of his band alludes to ” those who die in loneliness, away from society and never being found.” His music pays tribute, “to those who die in misery, in some place so far away that the sun is the one in charge of [burying] the bodies.”
This is a humbling notion if you think about it. No matter how far away from the society and human compassion you drift, the light of the sun will always find you, connecting you with the rest of humanity, as simultaneous beneficiaries of its persistent warmth and indiscriminate grace—even in death. It’s an uncommon message for a death metal album, but a beautiful sentiment, nonetheless.
You can find Rot in the Multidimensional Sewer on CD from Morbid Chapel Records
