Album Review: Kryptograf, Kryptonomicon
It’s not that warm tones, classic-style groove and progressive underpinnings haven’t been a part of Kryptograf‘s approach all along, but their third record, Kryptonomicon, brings new perspective and complexity to their songwriting. At the same time the ultra-manageable, accessible, send-to-your-normie-friends-to-show-them-what-heavy-rock-is-all-about seven-song/33-minute course of the LP is defined by the band continuing to take on more straightforward structures and stripping back some of the prog of their 2020 self-titled debut (discussed here) or 2022’s The Eldorado Spell (review here), and sounding in general way less concerned with genre than, say, anyone who reviews the album is likely to be. This is only to the record’s benefit.
Drummer Amund Nordstrøm makes his debut on Kryptonomicon alongside guitarist/vocalists Vegard Strand and Odd Erlend Mikkelsen and bassist Eivind Standal Moen, so inevitably there’s been some shift in dynamic in the three years since the last outing, but the songs are fluid and that’s crucial to understanding how the LP works. “Beyond the Horizon” is the opener and tells a lot of the story if you’re paying attention — it gets a little lush later on, but rocks plenty at the outset, is a fitting setup and engagingly catchy, etc., well composed and recorded with an organic if not strictly vintage mindset — but so much of what Kryptonomicon accomplishes as a collection comes through in the three-minute centerpiece “You and I.”
With a melody that would make Spidergawd blush, “You and I” stands between the title-track with its post-Graveyard sway and doomly creep, and the thicker motor-chug of “From Below,” with a nighttime cruise of a tempo and proto-metallic atmosphere answering back to “The Blade” earlier. At 3:04, it’s not the shortest cut — that’s the penultimate “Lost at Sea,” at 3:03 — but “You and I” stands out for how absolutely, emphatically taut it is. Understand, “Beyond the Horizon” and certainly “The Blade,” or even “Lost at Sea” which is so obviously conscious of what it’s trying and succeeding to evoke, and even the eight-minute finale “The Gales” don’t lack efficiency for what they’re doing.
The qualifier isn’t to be missed there. At no point are Kryptograf wasting time on Kryptonomicon, and I’m not trying to be cutesy and imply otherwise. But it’s worth keeping in mind even when smacked in the face by a song like “You and I,” which is just so ready to elbow its way into heavy rotation on your mental jukebox — if you’re younger: the playlist in your brain — with a chorus that shimmies, shuffles and soars in the span of about 10 seconds and lands a hook of a quality that not every band gets to write. I’m not talking smack about any of the other songs here — again, part of what makes the album work so well is that they’re not repeating themselves nearly as much as I am in talking about how they’re not repeating themselves — but “You and I” has that easy immersion of the kind of piece that came together in 20 minutes in a rehearsal space and nobody quite knows where it came from but there it is.
No idea if that’s the actual story of it, mind you, but that strut in the second half, the harmonica pushing in with righteous, classic arrogance, and the turn back to the chorus at the finish — it is at the very least a purposefully placed centerpiece. But like “Beyond the Horizon,” it doesn’t necessarily speak for the whole scope of Kryptonomicon, whether its breadth is shown in the acoustics included in “Lost at Sea” — a thrilling bit of anachronism in that it’s a band primarily 1970s-rooted and a move that sounds more derived from circa-’04 Mastodon; kudos all the more to Kryptograf for pushing genre limits in small but effective ways — or in the tumult of “The Gales,” which resolves in more acoustics, organ, and a lightly twisting riff that wouldn’t be out of place on an earlier Uncle Acid record.
But, while one might namedrop a band as a reference for a given part here and there, as they approach maturity, Kryptograf come through as more stridently themselves than they did even a few years ago, and where parts of Kryptonomicon might still draw from the Witchcraft / Graveyard school of retro-heavy, as the songwriting has grown sharper, the stylistic reach has expanded correspondingly. So Kryptonomicon is both the tightest record the band have yet produced — and considering it’s a one-quarter new lineup, that in itself is something worth recognizing — and the farthest ranging.
If that seems counterintuitive, the best advice I can give you from one listener to another is don’t get hung up on it, because the craft and performances throughout Kryptonomicon are strong enough that the band make their way smoothly from the start to the finish on their own terms, without question or anymore bumps along the way than give it character. As fascinating as the direction of Kryptograf‘s growth has been — and it has been; I’m not being sarcastic — the truth of the matter is that if this is your first Kryptograf record, the band make it easy to get on board.
Part of that is in the hooks of “Beyond the Horizon,” “You and I,” “From Below,” and so on, but from the outset it’s more about the controlled presence the band offer as they stand behind their songs. There is never a question that a piece will get where it’s going, and as the varied material is brought together by the vocals, or by a bassline, or a toe-tapper stretch of snare to push a driving riff, the lack of pretense reveals itself as an essential facet of the album’s persona. Kryptograf don’t present themselves in the name of genre expansion, or world takeover via t-shirt sales, or whatever it is that has bands releasing LPs these days. As a collective, they are most of all about the songs they’ve made, and their third album benefits from the clarity of vision behind it and the palpable attention to detail in the recording. If you believe in New Heavy Norway, I don’t see how you can fail to include Kryptograf among its brightest lights.
