Album Review: Cryptex - Once Upon A Time
Reviewed by Carl Black
When taking receipt of an album from a German prog metal band it might be easy to jump to a few conclusions. Overblown and deadly serious with no hint of irony. Well Cryptex’s third studio release couldn’t be further from my preconceptions. It's alive, positive, effervescent and slightly flamboyant. Try Coheed and Cambria playing Queen in a jazz club.
Through the course of these twelve tracks, main man Simon Moskon’s keyboard and vocals trade off against Andre Marten’s guitar who both battle for top spot. The line-up is completed by an excellent rhythm section of Marc Andrejkovits on bass and Simon Schroder on drums. A lot of the songs are structured on a jazzy piano melody which gives way to an insanely hooky bridges and choruses, accumulating in a killer guitar riff. But catch them while you can, they don’t hang around for long, each section only gets a couple of run throughs and then they're gone. This keeps all the songs times down and leaves you wanting to hear those earworm hooks again.
There are exceptions to this rule. The opener and title track has a dark, almost tragic feel about it that’s also upbeat and emotive. 'Haunted' starts with a driving guitar riff and embeds a female vocalist. 'Reptiles' see Cryptex at their most rocky and their most progressive with a bouncy lick that gets technical and intricate before finishing. We also get sax breaks, storytelling vocals, spoken word parts, short instrumentals and a stripped down piano ballad.
The album tails off at the end and there’s not a lot of anything on the last three songs, but this is a minor issue. 'Once Upon A Time' is a good waste of time. Plenty to keep you interested and will keep a happy smile on your face all the way through.
Cryptex's latest album 'Once Upon A Time' is available now via Steamhammer/SPV.
