[Album Reviews]: CRYPTIC SHIFT (UK) & CONVERGE (US).
ALBUMS:
Cryptic Shift (UK) - Overspace & Supertime
Converge (US) - Love Is Not Enough
Cryptic Shift (Leeds, UK) - Overspace & Supertime
Genre: Progressive/Experimental/Psychedelic/Technical Death Metal
Release Date/Label: 27th February, 2026 via Metal Blade Records
Recording/Mixing:Jack Helliwell at DC Studios
Mastering:Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studio
Production:Alexander Bradley & Ryan Sheperson
Cover Art: Jesse Jacobi (Tomb Mold)
Additional Art:Abrazive Design/OccultOcto
Some of the most absolutely peak moments I’ve had with extreme metal live in the past five years has fortunately and luckily included opportunities to see Cryptic Shift play the near half-hour marathon track ‘Moonbelt Immolator’ in the flesh. An expansive and gargantuan journey unto its’ own, it is nevertheless folded into a musically and conceptually dense, ambiguous and flighty conceptual framework in Visitations from Enceladus.
As someone as autistically obsessed with higher-order cosmic concepts as he is with spacefaring death metal, the album was an absolutely perfect addition to my prog-death listening canon. Imagine my joy, then, to discover that they’d not only chosen to take their interplanar progressive death metal mayhem further via Overspace & Supertime, I also learnt our conceptual protagonist (known as ‘The Recaller’) ventures further into his own cosmic journey in search of ‘The Alien Sorceress’!
And musically, what a treat this follow-up concept continuation is. Beginning in decidedly non-metal form, we’re instead entreated to an incredibly Alarum/Cynic-coded warbling of janky, distorted clean jazz guitar and widdly shredding - right before the dense mayhem that is opener ‘Cryogenically Frozen’ whisks us amidst vague, garbled sub-space transmission style sampling, deep into technical-death weirdness and wizardry. Guitars flit about with their own schizophreniform, climbing and tailing up and down the neck as electronic sampling and warbling dives confuse us to the sounds of failing spacecraft equipment.
The staunchly non-traditional leanings of vocalist/guitarist Xander Bradley and Joe Bradley seem to follow patterns of both mindless, oppositional-defiant chaos and lock-step rhythmic binding. Ebbing and flowing with this feeling of structural tension and reintegration is the wildly bouncy, creative and stylised playing of John Riley - a man who has taken the concept of ‘let’s whack a fretless bass in there’ to the florid extremes espoused by modern bands such as Obscura, Beyond Creation and the like. Underpinning at at times overshadowing all of this is the serpentine machinations of Ryan Shepersons’ arachnoid drumming, creating a rhythm-section that feels equally coldly, clinically engineered and wondrously organic, flighty and playful.
From the ascension out of cryogenic freezing into the sprawling, expansive epic for our album in ‘Stratocumulus Evergaol’ (a track so labyrinthine, it legitimately deserves its’ own review-length analysis), we relent from this expansive centrefold into harsher and increasingly musically desperate fare. The increasing dread and despondency via the doomy, psychotic amblings of ‘Hyperspace Topography’ evokes the gripping terror of endless cosmic distance. Even in a titular sense, ‘Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)’ threatens intellectualised insanity - let alone the dizzying, swirling musical peaks, valleys and troughs. By this stage of the album, the experience threatens emotional and sensory overwhelm, but alas, like The Recaller - we persist.
Collapsing then building towards several nebulae-sized crescendos, album closer and title track ‘Overspace and Supertime’ marries all and sundry from the prior tracks into something similarly inexplicably coherent from an otherwise unyielding, maddening psychedelia-washed expanse of boundless progressive death metal.
Like Visitations from Enceladus, Overspace & Supertime is both a challenging listen, and a thoroughly well-guided musical journey into the most ambitious and comprehensive modern expressions of progressive, cosmic technical death metal. I adore this album, and it’ll certainly be hard-placed to keep knocked off the perch for end of year AOTY (Album of The Year) considerations. Oh, it’s only April too, so yes - it’s that good.
There’s also a lot of fantastical and new additions to the bands’ style that are really beyond the scope of a smaller review - gang-chants, arena-rock style riffin’, and of course just so much experimental riff-work that builds upon and far broadens the Cryptic Shift brand as envelope-pushing sci-fi extreme metal sherpas. One of so many examples - the riff in ‘Stratocumulus Evergoal’ that follows a depressive downward slump, straight into some vocals and riffage that could be considered proggy-death AOR or even post-hardcore - straight into more death metal fury.
Start to finish, it’s an unmissable album from an unmissable band. Especially if you consider yourself an open-minded explorer of all things cosmic - and death metal.
Hugely recommended; top marks from me.
(And if you’re new here? Yes, you can consider THIS length ‘mini-review’ as far as I’m concerned. Check out some of the other fantastic reviews by my wonderful team of contributors via theAlbum Reviews category if you want more!).
LINKS:
Cryptic Shift:
Metal Blade Records:
Additional Links:
DC Studios, Barnsley UK:
Official Website/ Instagram (@dcbarnsley)/
Email: info@dcstudiosbarnsley.com
Priory Recording Studios:
Official Website/ Facebook/ X/Twitter/
Email: info@prioryrecordingstudios.co.uk
Jesse Jacobi:
LinkTree (links to: Artist Shop (Cryptic Shift Painting), International ‘Book Of The New Sun’ Prints, NORCO Steam Store Link) /
Full-Album Stream Link (via Metal Blade Records’ official Youtube Channel):
Converge (Boston, US) - Love Is Not Enough
Genre: Post-Hardcore/Metallic Hardcore/Mathcore
Release Date/Label: 13th February, 2026 via Epitaph Records/ Deathwish, Inc.
Recording/Production:Kurt Ballou (Converge) of/at God City Studios (assistant Engineer: Zach Weeks)
Mastering: Alan Douches, of West West Side Music
Album Art: Jacob Bannon (Converge)
I’ll be perfectly honest; between the very Axe To Fall artwork and the promising nastiness of the albums’ lead singles, my first foray into Love Is Not Enough was probably the first time I’d felt a little sub-par in terms of overall impact with any new Converge album-listening.
That in and of itself, I’ve later come to find, is both a good thing and likely a product of my own preconceptions, based on the overall trajectory these guys had, until know, been plodding along to in recent history.
For a while now, we’ve been entreated to increasingly introspective and lengthy compositions through the usual Converge firestorms; from the morose double-hitter of ‘Cruel Bloom’ & ‘Wretched World’ from the aforementioned LP (still one of my Converge favourites to today), through to the addition of progressive/post-metal expansiveness alongside Chelsea Wolfe’s harrowing melodicism in Bloodmoon - yeah, perhaps we all got comfortable in our assumptions. Ah, Bannon’s pissed off enough and worked enough out of his system alongside Ballou and Co. that perhaps they’re mellowing out in their age? Even if such mellowness is still ridden with their harsh existential and emotional angst?
Yeah nah, mate. Nah.
Love Is Not Enough eschews all of that and comes tearing out of the gate like Cerberus itself, after someone called it a two-bit Pomeranian puppy. The compacted, emotionally-charged fists punch hard right from the get-go, Kurt Ballou (Guitar) wasting no time to trill into the bands’ latter-day hallmark Southern-fried math-metal chaotic riffing in opener/title-track ‘Love Is Not Enough’. Spurting forth from the speakers like a molten-metal post-hardcore laceration, the brief and punchy number quickly steps aside to give ‘Bad Faith’ breathing room to swing a wide, rock-oriented cudgel of martial riffage, long-term rhythm dynamo-duo Nate Newton (Bass) and Ben Koller (Drums) provide interesting and jagged variations to create that signature off-kilter Converge stomp.
‘Distract and Divide’ pares things back even further, delivering that Jane Doe-era ‘Homewrecker’ styled no-frills, full-frontal grindcore leaning assault, rusted sheets of corrugated-iron riffery mashing with the iconic and no less dulled throaty roars of Jacob Bannon (Vocals). Truly iconic in his unique visceral, vocal-node-shredding bark, the album also fitfully includes a smattering of the pained The Jesus Lizard styled shouty, desperate vocal clawings. On this LP, however, they’re comparatively absent when contrasted against the past few, indicating Jacob and Co have plenty of venom left in the tank.
‘To Feel Something’ these days usually involves a violent jolting out of our antidepressant-and-antipahy induced slumber, and thus we cop another blistering caterwaul of gnashing, feverish riffage with plenty of Ballou groove-licks in another grindy math-metal dirge that sees itself out the door in under two minutes flat. It’s here I realise my lack of cognitive residue adhered to the album on first listen; the entire thing flies by, particularly the speed-riddled and vicious first half. ‘Beyond Repair’ similarly adopts a rapid-fire pacing, inclusive of some very thrash-metal-coded galloping and riffing that even the staunchest ‘core isn’t metal’ dude up the back up of the venue with arms folded can appreciate.
We wouldn’t have a Converge album without at least one creepy interlude laid prone under atmospherics, off-kilter lead guitar playing and disconcerting ambience. It clocks in at just under two minutes, yet ‘Beyond Repair’ signifies an important turning-point in both the urgency and overall length of tracks to follow, as if orating a desperate man’s catching of breath, post anxiety attack.
‘Amon Amok’ comparatively almost feels like a play on metal tropes, at least in title, but it’s no also-ran imitator. Almost eclipsing the prior two tracks in total length, this track signifies that foreshadowed slow-down with lashings of both groove and madness aplenty. Four minutes of discordant, effects-drenched leads, thick, doomy riffs and moments of sheer riff-panic.
‘Force Meets Presence’ bolts out the door from the metal gig, diving straight off the stage into pure ‘core territory - albeit, with that corrosive, jagged and non-confirming Converge twist on the theme - again, in under two minutes. It’s reminiscent of ‘Cutter’ off Axe To Fall or ‘Heaven In Her Arms’ from Jane Doe with regards to ensuring no one feels complacent towards the final refrains, and helps keep pacing up nicely.
‘Gilded Cage’ bring some more of the ethereal, swampy and haunting reverberated leads/riff structure we’re used to from Bloodmoon, however it ensures a directness and energy throughout to keep relevant with current proceedings. Ballou and Co have proven themselves adept at working in doomy post-metal nastiness amongst the ‘core; this one’s no different.
Blink and you’ll miss this album, seriously - but ‘Make Me Forget You’ has a desperation in the vocal refrains that feel like vocal pleading to stay, listen and keep up with Bannon’s caustic emotional lamentations. Closing out this 31-minute metallic-hardcore nova is closer ‘We Were Never The Same’, a mournful and plodding cantation with sporadic bursts and spirals of the bands’ reflexive beatdown against metal, hardcore and rock songwriting tradition.
Love might Not Be Enough, but Converge sure are. These American stalwarts have proved with their 11th opus (soon be followed by another LP, Hum Of Hurt, on June 5th 2026!) that they’re oft-imitated, but never surpassable. A welcoming burst of Convergian fury following the broodiness of Bloodmoon, and an exciting sign of things to come for these veterans.
LINKS:
Epitaph Records:
deathwish, inc.:
Additional Links:
God City Studios:
LinkTree (God City Instruments/ Bandcamp/ Kurt Ballou/Converge, etc)
west west side music:
Love Is Not Enough Full-Album Stream (via the official Epitaph Records Youtube channel:)
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