CRYPTIC HATRED - FINLAND

Nocturnal Sickness - 2022 - The Other
Internal Torment - 2024 - Time To Kill

Cryptic Hatred image
  
 
Members
Vocals
Disguised Malignance, Gorefixion, HappoSurma>>EEMIL LAJOMA>>Disguised Malignance, Gorefixion, HappoSurma

Guitar
Gorefixion, HappoSurma>>EEMIL LAJOMA>>Gorefixion, HappoSurma - HappoSurma, Krusifoitu>>Jami Lamio>>HappoSurma, Krusifoitu, Demonic Torment - Stahlhelm, Gorekaust, Eradication Of The Unworthy Infants>>JOONAS HONKANEN>>Eradication Of The Unworthy Infants


Bass
MISKA HAGELBERG

Drum
TATU SAVES





History & Biography
The band appeared with its debut demo, entitled Free From The Grave, in 2020. Cryptic Hatred was founded by a group of four school friends in 2019. The gang was influenced by the Florida death metal sound.

Nocturnal Sickness was released by The Other Records in Q1 2022. The group had already played Helsinki Death Fest in 2021. Guitarist Jami Lamio left in 2023. Cryptic Hatred used Joonas Honkanen for live work. Time To Kill Records signed Finland-based death metal band Cryptic Hatred. The band released a full-length album, entitled Internal Torment, in July 2024. In the meantime, there was a mini-tour with Azatoth in Finland in the spring, which was dubbed Blasphemous Torment Over Finland. The two had played a Halloween Party in 2023 as well. The act was also booked for the Helsinki Death Fest. The band announced a couple of concerts opening for October Tide and Shade Empire and then seemingly overlapping dates opening for Wolfheart in Finland for late summer/early autumn of 2024. In the meantime, there was an album release concert with Rats Will Feast and Kuvotus.

The group called its music "Mesmerizing Cryptic Metal."


Reviews

CRYPTIC HATRED - INTERNAL TORMENT - TIME TO KILL  
Internal Torment is an adventure in death metal. Let me explain. The opening track Death Is Upon You (simultaneously the opening phrase out of singer Eemil Lajoma’s mouth) has a Raining Blood effect that leads to a torrent of death metal that inserts something of a mixture of elements. The tracks have a bias towards the shorter side. The band’s publicity insists that the quartet draws inspiration from the “old-school Florida death metal scene,” which is surely accurate one supposes, but to be clear the band’s sound is much more expansive - within the confines of death metal - than the confidence of that quotation allows. Similarly, the band is much more true to death metal and heavy than the publicity suggests. It is easy to expect the worst with a Finland-based band. The band deliberately incorporates snippets and medlies of different kinds into each song, as something of a signature characteristic, yet remains completely respectable. This essence established, let us write a few words track by track.
The aforementioned Death Is Upon You is a storm of pestilence, hatred and death. The vocals are comparable to Corpsegrinder and settle into a barrage of death metal that hits up both the mid-pace and faster sections. The time changes are almost surprising given how often they occur and how seamlessly they are executed. The track has a tasteful, albeit too short, a lead. There is an old-school feel to the band’s barbed rhythms that take one back to the Demigods or God Macabres of the world. That is despite the almost incessant brutality there is consistently this smidgen of melody implicit in the music. Breeding Of Evil is a frontal assault with vocals that spurt and spew. The music takes no prisoners and has wild riffs thrown in our faces with abandon. Creepy effect. Violent music. Wild riffs. What’s with the tinker bell? Well, again, it’s part of the motif. Chasm Of Void is again vomiting the vocals with that incredible mix of ferocity, crushing verifiable riffs and gentle iota of melody - one hell of an effective beefy riff on this one - that make these songs exude a sense of adventure. The transition with ease from speed to heavy riffs; from slam to rollicking death stands. Yet, unfortunately, there is deviation from the essence of death metal. This one has a dual melodic solo, but alas they are Finns and cannot help themselves. It is a national addiction. They are all junkies for what they were fed at elementary school. The song ends with keyboards. Yes, it is a part of the deliberate pattern of the record, but they just can’t help wuss out somewhere. The next track is the fourth one and called Homicidal Intentions. It begins with pseudo-Voivod (from when the Canadians were good) technicality. It is both melodic and harsh and kicks in with a technical blast before the gurgling vocals kick in. The bass has a nifty sound and creepy run. The singer remains the star of this show, but boy can this band accelerate more smoothly than any other. Mesmerised By The Malignant Gaze is violence, is pounding grinding death, is a classy lead, is a singer with a vomitous delivery and keeps the dynamism of the songs on course. This one’s extraneous element is a whisper and fades out like a pop song. The amount of variety and the number of elements on this record is almost cause for a game of surprises by now. Still, for metal fans, it must emphasised that the band somehow manages to avoid making an arse of itself or lose the thread of heaviness (stupid synthesizers aside). Tomb Of Desecration must have the time-change of the year. What a nifty cool song. Death metal supremacy drips from it even if the song does hint more than any other here at Cannibal Corpse before, of course, changing pace! Effective riffing with a touch of dissonance is this song. For a couple of tracks the vocalist has been the star of the show. The riffs have made the guitars the main attraction on a couple of tracks. On Mauled To Flesh, surely, the drums are the aces the band pulls out of its Finnish hat. Good time to mention the heavy sound the band has gotten out of its kit. A warm and heavy snare sound, that skews the pots and pans and any other kitchen appliance, is the tone of choice at Metallian Towers. Good solo too. Like Grave? You will like Mauled To Flesh. Another obvious and deliberate insistence on having a medley or other sound element is on Beyond Hatred, which contains a short acoustic interlude. Then it is time for the bass to show off impressively. Not far behind is the melodic soloing. Again with Cryptic Hatred, the lead is too short. Either way, one is reminded of how mature the young band’s compositions are. The Passage is a minute-long instrumental written by a guest almost at the record’s end leading to the closing cut, the title track. Internal Torment is a pounding crushing blast. Enjoy the old-school Finnish melodious guitar on top of the brutal as hell raucousness. Here is also the album’s most intricate solo. Darn, if you can solo like this, what is stopping you from adding two to each and every song? Sadly, the background synthesiser reappears. Exorcise the goddam Visage Finnishness out of your existence, boys.
The cover artwork’s victim is in for a world of pain like an Amophis fan force fed Cryptic Hatred. Death metal fans, however, are in luck. - Ali “The Metallian”


Interviews
Interview with CRYPTIC HATRED
Finland has a lot to answer for as far as heavy metal goes. Whether it is running a folk band masquerading as metal or a pop act pretending to be heavy; be it a band with a kantele, a sitar and a saxophone posing as being a serious proposition or recording the ever-cliched cover version of a chart-topping pop/dance tune and headbanging to it, the country has done more than any other to sully the name and identity of heavy metal. One would be forgiven for noticing a band’s Finnish origin and quickly flipping the page. That is the sort of damage this land has inflicted on itself, and the music of the gods, over the years.
Nevertheless, Finland has always had a minority of bands that have both been serious and seriously metal. Albums like Slumber Of Sullen Eyes, Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz…, World Of Myths, The Winterlong… and Black Church are superlative and from that country, but for every such album there have been twenty kilos of pretender crud making the Metallian Towers knights crying with laughter. A sense for irony is not on the curriculum, whatever it is that they teach at elementary schools in Finland (triangles, synthesisers and flute?).
This is why it would have been habitual to ignore Cryptic Hatred given how the press release betrayed the origin of the act as Finland. That, as it happens, would have been a mistake. Cryptic Hatred and its 2024 album Internal Torment has turned out more than fine. Ali “The Metallian” got hold of singer and guitarist Eemil Lajoma to investigate. - 01.07.2024

METALLIAN: Eemil, thank you for your time and giving us an interview. The band is still young so we should ask where you guys came from and how the band was founded.
EEMIL: Thank you for having us. We founded the band back in high school and started by playing covers of songs we liked in our school’s music classroom in 2019.

METALLIAN: Were you all school friends?
EEMIL: The original line-up consisted of a friends’ group from school. Our school was called Urheilupuiston Koulu in Klaukkala, just north of Helsinki.

METALLIAN: Cryptic Hatred is a serious band with seriously good metal. Finland, at Metallian Towers, is generally considered a wimpy country with barely any metal. Every 'metal' band has keyboards and sings about folk crap. How come you get it right?
EEMIL: Folk metal doesn’t really resonate with anyone in the band. Our goal since the start has been to deliver punch-in-the-nuts death metal with some mesmerising twists.

METALLIAN: What made you different from everybody else?
EEMIL: I guess what makes us different is the fact that we're just being ourselves. We don't dress the typical "metal head" way and we don't have a full-on death metal aesthetic. We utilise samples, sound effects and synthesizers in our music, and also we have very rhythmic patterns almost like in hip-hop. We have our own style and we want to be different from the masses, I think that definitely has something to do with it.

METALLIAN: The band's publicity emphasises the 'Florida' inspirations and influences. Quizzically, my ears found a lot more than the Florida sound going on with Cryptic Hatred. Thoughts?
EEMIL: We love the classic ‘90s’ death metal sound and you can probably hear it on our first demo, which was called Free From The Grave from 2020. After the demo came out people started comparing us to Cannibal Corpse. It was exciting to hear people compare us to our heroes, but we also wanted to create our own sound and be known for something original. Our influences come from our own taste in music. We listen to anything from rap to metal and anything in-between.

METALLIAN: Could you compare your new album, Internal Torment, with your 2022 debut, Nocturnal Sickness? Would you describe the two albums as similar?
EEMIL: I think you can compare the two, but our sound has definitely changed since then. I feel like we’ve taken huge strides forward in terms of songwriting, which in my opinion is responsible for the new depth our music has. The lyrics on Internal Torment have a much deeper meaning, as it focuses a lot on self-reflection and personal development through hardship. Nocturnal Sickness on the other hand is more themed around murder, zombies and all the ‘nice’ death metal stuff.

METALLIAN: It looks like the band deliberately and consciously has inserted at least one medley or extraneous element into each and every song. Whether a keyboard part or a whisper, etc. each song gets at least one. Did we get this right?
EEMIL: You got that right! We wanted to add some spice to the songs with all kinds of cool atmospheric effects. It goes very well with our live shows, since we use all kinds of ambient sounds to make our live experience feel and sound better than ever.

METALLIAN: There are a few tasteful and adept leads on the album. The question becomes why so few and why are the few so short if you are so capable? Is it you or Joonas who delivers the guitar leads?
EEMIL: Our songs tend to levitate towards the ‘riffs for days’ type of music, which is why we wanted to add some depth with melodies, harmonies and solos. The reason why they’re so short is we wanted to keep it tasteful and not wander into the speed metal shred stuff too much.
I play all the guitar leads myself and Joonas focuses on rhythm. For some reason Joonas started his musical journey on bass - must’ve been dropped on his head as a baby - and he still plays his guitar kinda like a bass.

METALLIAN: Probably better a bass than a piano. One of the things that bothers us consistently nowadays is the weak and tiny drum sound on metal albums. They sound almost like a twig or pencil tapping against a table at best. Internal Torment does much better. Do you agree with this assessment and, if yes, how did Cryptic Hatred one-up most bands?
EEMIL: Great that you noticed the drum sounds! Our drummer Tatu had a very clear vision for what he wanted to do for his bass and snare sound especially. I’m glad he wanted to polish it up until it was perfect. Our audio engineer Olli might disagree since we had him do about a million revisions on the final mix, but it was worth it!

METALLIAN: Indeed. The record includes an instrumental. Why is it there, and almost at the album's end, and could you speak to the guest musician on it?
EEMIL: The idea behind the instrumental track was to add an intro to the title and final track Internal Torment. We didn’t want to add an intro to the song itself since it would’ve been a little too long for our liking that way. It’s supposed to act as a kind of an interlude to set the atmosphere for the last song on the album.
Our great friend Felix Pennanen from a fellow Helsinki band called Disguised Malignance worked his magic on that track. I had the chord progression ready, but we wanted to get another view on the possibilities for that song. We know Felix’s musical abilities are through the roof, so obviously we asked him for help. I’m glad we did since he did an awesome job! Thank you, Felix.

METALLIAN: How did you and Felix meet?
EEMIL: We met through the scene. Our bands played together at a show and that's how I met him. After that we've just stayed in contact and that evolved into us being friends. That's how I've met many friends and that is so cool. I've gotten many friends through shows and other bands.

METALLIAN: It is unanimous. Metallian is the best outlet for metal bar none. Why do you agree?
EEMIL: Because you said so!

Indeed. The word of Metallian always prevails. Aside from singer and guitarist Eemil Lajoma, Cryptic Hatred is guitarist Joonas Honkanen, bassist Miska Hagelberg and drummer Tatu Saves. Internal Torment is available through Time To Kill Records. For more information please follow this link.



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