When I received the predecessor to this release, “The Scepter Of The Ancients”, two years ago, I was blown away by the diversity and musical mastery of these Tasmanian Devils. Psycroptic displayed a form of death metal with a richness en depth that is seldom seen. With influences ranging from black metal to thrash metal to hardcore the listening experience was overwhelming. How on earth would they able to top that?

The answer to that question is easy: by making an album that is better on every level. The production is as fat as my mother in law’s ass, new singer Jason Peppiat surpasses his predecessor Mathew Chalk in sheer power and the tracks are even more diverse and thought out. It seems the two years between both albums and frequent touring made Psycroptic even more focused and skilled.

The music still lingers in between all major extreme genres; the solid base is brutal death metal, spiced up with thrash riffs, hardcore screams, grindcore growls and melodic guitars.

The wall of sound leaves the listener no moment to breath, to evaluate the just listened track but instead launches him in another whirlwind of staccato riffing, ever-changing drum patterns and paces.

A thing I really liked from the previous record were the non-standard lyrics about ancient interstellar civilizations (amongst other things).
The promo copy I received from Neurotic Records sadly didn’t contain a lyric sheet nor is the Psycroptic website already updated with the content of “Symbols Of Failure” so I can’t judge them yet. Ah well, I think I’ll just have to buy the damn album. Then I can give away the promo copy to one of my friends because Psycroptic deserves to be heard by as many people as possible.