You know how they say your taste buds change every few years? Well I think the same is happening to my musical tastes. The debut from these Fins, Unending Degradation, made my 2013 year end list, but this year, this hulking, cavernous form of Dark Descent death metal just isn’t doing it for me. And by all accounts, Dark Descent is having yet another stellar year, as usually I’d be all over likes of Ruinous, Blood Incantation, Ghoulgotha, Vircolac and Phobocosm, but only the Interment and Vanhelgd, has really stuck with me.

And that brings me to the new Krypts album. I waited a while to review this to see if this one caught me any different or if I’d have the same issue I had with both Phobocosm and Ghoulgotha; I loved their  debuts, Deprived,  and  The Deathmass Cloak respectively, but this year’s follow ups, Bringer of Drought  and To Starve the Cross barely registered with me, hence no reviews (you know what your mother said about saying something nice…).

But I wanted to shake the funk, and see if DDR still had the magic, so I kept listening to Remnants of Expansion, to see if it clicked. And Unfortunately it still has not. Even doomier and drawn out than the debut (again, like Phobocosm), Remnants of Expansion  has all the hallmarks of  DDR release and the revived crumbling Finnish sound, but there is very little substance past the outer layer of the thick, churning, murky exterior.

11 minute opener “Arrow of Entropy” really puts the issues I’m having with the style into one song, where dread inducing and cavernous, crawling riffs ooze from the CD, but they never really go anywhere or the whole 11 minutes. There is no payoff or climax and it starts the album on a wandering note that’s hard to recover from. “The Withering Titan” tries, with a 7 minute rumble and churn, but while teasing with some nice riffs, Krypts shift before it sinks in never letting anything really hit home. Then we get the dreaded title track that’s just an atmospheric, shorter instrumental number- one of my pet peeves.

It’s not until “Entrailed to the Breaking Wheel” where I start to get a sense of “whoa- that’s more like it” from the album and that’s the second to last track. That said, the best is saved for last with closer “Transfixed”, though it still seems to end with unfinished business, which is a central theme for me for the entire album. I’m sure I am in the minority on this one, and this release will get heaps of praise at the end of the year, along with all the other 2016 DRR releases, but personally, I’m not feeling it, even though I’m enjoying some similar styled stuff by Ulcerate, Zhrine and such.

Sorry Dark Descent, it’s not you, it’s me….

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