Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Prepare For Take Off With RYAN And ALEXANDER From CRYPTIC SHIFT
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I'm Ryan.
- 0:00Speaker 2: I'm from played drums in Cryptic Shift, dam Xander.
- 0:04Speaker 1: I do the guitars and vocals and Cryptic Shift where
- 0:08Speaker 1: we're bringing astro death to planet Earth. Yeah, ripping death
- 0:14Speaker 1: thrashloads of sci Fis to go along with our sci
- 0:17Speaker 1: Fis based battles and yeah, lodical solos, sound effects.
- 0:24Speaker 3: That's just what everybody needs in everyday life, is it?
- 0:28Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 0:28Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man, oh.
- 0:29Speaker 4: Yes, Critic Shift released in your album over Spaces super
- 0:33Speaker 4: Time just slast week guys.
- 0:35Speaker 3: So how's the only reception being for it?
- 0:38Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, it's been killing, man, Like, it's good to
- 0:40Speaker 2: finally get the record out after all this time, and
- 0:43Speaker 2: it's good to see a lot of new fans worldwide,
- 0:46Speaker 2: so that's always a pleasure, you know. But it's also
- 0:49Speaker 2: good to see everybody's happy with it, you know. It
- 0:52Speaker 2: doesn't seem that any fans have been disappointed or anything
- 0:55Speaker 2: like that, so that's super killer, you know.
- 0:58Speaker 4: Yeah, actually dapering the album from musical point of view
- 1:02Speaker 4: for us who use what you're gone from.
- 1:05Speaker 2: So we were kind of going for like similar how
- 1:08Speaker 2: the album runs like kind of concurrent as a follow
- 1:12Speaker 2: up to the first debut record, Visitation, Swrom and Saladus.
- 1:17Speaker 2: We're over spacing super time. This time round. We wanted
- 1:20Speaker 2: to take the sounds that we previously established and just
- 1:23Speaker 2: refine it a little bit. And the same goes for
- 1:27Speaker 2: almost all the choices, you know, like a refinement of
- 1:29Speaker 2: the songwriting, the musicianship, the influences, the production, you know,
- 1:34Speaker 2: all sorts.
- 1:35Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that was like the overall.
- 1:37Speaker 2: Goal this time round with the record and creating that,
- 1:40Speaker 2: especially if we've been a debut record on for us
- 1:43Speaker 2: on Metal Blade Records, it was super important to make
- 1:47Speaker 2: sure we just you know, polishing up in the machine
- 1:51Speaker 2: a little bit, you know.
- 1:53Speaker 4: Yeah, right, cal He released the singles Hicks Eyes, Topography
- 1:57Speaker 4: and Cryogenically prosing. So just say someone only heard those
- 2:01Speaker 4: songs from the album like an a good sony representation,
- 2:04Speaker 4: what what's your respect her of?
- 2:05Speaker 3: They on his precious surface?
- 2:07Speaker 1: Definitely. They're the three shortest songs. They're like intentionally the
- 2:11Speaker 1: like the singles, they've all kind of got the same structure.
- 2:14Speaker 1: They come in with an introduction to introduce like the
- 2:16Speaker 1: themes and the tonality, and then they they blast into
- 2:20Speaker 1: like a verse chorus, a big, like cool middle section
- 2:23Speaker 1: that's like adventurous and then hits back with the verse
- 2:28Speaker 1: and chorus. So they're quite like a digestible and they yeah,
- 2:32Speaker 1: they're good introductions before you dive into the longer songs.
- 2:37Speaker 4: It follows unconceptually from your previous album, Vigitations of Nsladis
- 2:41Speaker 4: as you say so, brought us through the overall story arc,
- 2:44Speaker 4: and then the story arc told specifically through this album.
- 2:50Speaker 1: Yes, on the Cosmic Dreams that track from twenty seventeen,
- 2:55Speaker 1: our character from that like splits into two and one
- 2:58Speaker 1: of them was there of the guy from Visitations, the amnesiac,
- 3:03Speaker 1: but this time it's the recaller, and this album is
- 3:06Speaker 1: just following her through adventures is quite similar to the
- 3:11Speaker 1: adventure from Visitations from Enceladus. She goes to a lot
- 3:14Speaker 1: of the same locations and that, but there's a there's
- 3:18Speaker 1: enough like a new stuff to it for him to
- 3:20Speaker 1: be considered like, you know, a bit of a sequel
- 3:22Speaker 1: as well as like a companion piece to Visitations. So yeah,
- 3:25Speaker 1: the opening track has her escaping from like a cryogenic
- 3:29Speaker 1: freezing facility, and then track to is her hunting down
- 3:33Speaker 1: the alien that you see on the front cover. She
- 3:35Speaker 1: goes through like a big like Star Wars style space battle,
- 3:38Speaker 1: goes through some clouds of gas, giants and stuff, and
- 3:41Speaker 1: then hyperspace topographers her she crashes a ship mid light
- 3:47Speaker 1: speed jump. So lots of cool, like weird, hard sci
- 3:51Speaker 1: fi like concepts mixed in with some like cooler aliens
- 3:57Speaker 1: and battles.
- 3:59Speaker 4: I'm glad you venture the front Cava, guys, because visually
- 4:02Speaker 4: it's it's stunning. It's it's like it's it's so much
- 4:05Speaker 4: gone on there, Like tell us about how that ties
- 4:08Speaker 4: in with the with the concept.
- 4:11Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the that's the moment that the recall our character.
- 4:14Speaker 1: She meets with the alien Sorceress at the end of
- 4:18Speaker 1: track two Strata Communist ever Gals. It's one of the
- 4:21Speaker 1: most pivotal moments on the record conceptually in the lyrics
- 4:26Speaker 1: and as well as like their music itself. The whole
- 4:30Speaker 1: track kind of builds up to this meeting and then
- 4:33Speaker 1: the rest of the album is like the consequence of that.
- 4:37Speaker 1: So it was like really important to get this this
- 4:41Speaker 1: meeting of these two characters as like the the main
- 4:46Speaker 1: like visual for the front cover, and yeah, Jesse Jacobby
- 4:51Speaker 1: painted thisst did an awesome job, and I was really
- 4:55Speaker 1: into like clouds and their formations and like the science
- 4:59Speaker 1: behind them for this record as well. So I really
- 5:02Speaker 1: wanted him to like build in these characters into like
- 5:07Speaker 1: the cloud landscape. So there's all sorts of like cool
- 5:09Speaker 1: cordsformations in the back and at the bottom there as well.
- 5:14Speaker 4: I come back a bit like you guys both started
- 5:16Speaker 4: Cricket Shift back in twenty fifteen. So what was a
- 5:20Speaker 4: musical climate like that gave birth to the band and
- 5:22Speaker 4: where did you fit in initially?
- 5:24Speaker 1: Yeah, we we were in like a bunch of like
- 5:27Speaker 1: smaller local bands before and it was kind of like
- 5:30Speaker 1: the tail end of the UK's like Thrash Resurgence. There
- 5:35Speaker 1: was a lot of a lot of cool bands at
- 5:37Speaker 1: that time that were playing like a Blood Vera, Execution
- 5:41Speaker 1: Insurgency to name a few, and we kind of joined
- 5:45Speaker 1: in on that scene. And yeah, it was a really
- 5:47Speaker 1: cool time to start playing as like a young young
- 5:52Speaker 1: metal head around those years. And yeah, definitely informed who
- 5:57Speaker 1: we are today absolutely.
- 6:00Speaker 4: What was your early vision I guess for the band
- 6:02Speaker 4: and music and how did that change things behind a
- 6:05Speaker 4: bit more serious and he started getting a bit attracted.
- 6:09Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, I mean we had just the same
- 6:13Speaker 2: as any other metal band that's like forms, you know,
- 6:15Speaker 2: you want to take it as far as you can,
- 6:17Speaker 2: you know, And I don't think we had kind of
- 6:21Speaker 2: any plan to do any sort of you know, big
- 6:24Speaker 2: grandios or albums like we have, you know, like now
- 6:29Speaker 2: this is our second full length concept piece, you know,
- 6:32Speaker 2: and it's bigger than the first one. That was never
- 6:35Speaker 2: necessarily a plan, But I think that that all came
- 6:38Speaker 2: together just through just our continued progression and interest as
- 6:44Speaker 2: musicians and songwriters really, you know, and you know, I
- 6:49Speaker 2: think definitely like metal music, rock music is definitely the most,
- 6:55Speaker 2: if not only appropriate like genre for concept records to
- 7:02Speaker 2: some degree, you know, So it makes all sense.
- 7:05Speaker 4: Yeah, Now you're essentially combine your lab of brass and
- 7:09Speaker 4: death metal and sci fi into a musical tapestry. So
- 7:13Speaker 4: do you have a specific writing style or formats to
- 7:16Speaker 4: bring all of that together or do differ each time?
- 7:20Speaker 1: Every song is kind of different. A lot of the
- 7:25Speaker 1: songs have kind of like a structural road map that
- 7:28Speaker 1: we follow that have a lot of riffs and like
- 7:29Speaker 1: lyric ideas quite early on, but the last track, the
- 7:33Speaker 1: title track in particular, was is like one of the
- 7:36Speaker 1: most recently written tracks that had when we started writing
- 7:39Speaker 1: all of this stuff around like twenty twenty one. Basically
- 7:43Speaker 1: nothing of over Space and Super Time the title track existed,
- 7:46Speaker 1: So it was the first time in a while that
- 7:49Speaker 1: we've written something from scratch that wasn't built entirely, like
- 7:53Speaker 1: you know, entirely from the foundations of like like quite
- 7:56Speaker 1: old rifts that had been planned for a while. So yeah,
- 8:00Speaker 1: a general mix of everything, But I guess sometimes it's
- 8:03Speaker 1: brand new stuff. Sometimes it's old risk that we work
- 8:05Speaker 1: on sometimes that we're jamming in the room as well,
- 8:09Speaker 1: with all.
- 8:09Speaker 4: The sci fi elements I guess that come into it
- 8:12Speaker 4: and make it give it that grand sort of cinematic
- 8:15Speaker 4: type scupture and like you've obviously got something in mind
- 8:18Speaker 4: when you start writing. But how different is the finished
- 8:21Speaker 4: product usually to what starts off up?
- 8:24Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be completely different to some degree. I
- 8:29Speaker 2: think it depends on the certain sections and stuff like that.
- 8:34Speaker 2: But also especially with you know, the bigger, more epic sections,
- 8:40Speaker 2: especially where there you know, the music small tailored towards
- 8:44Speaker 2: delivering something more like dynamic and narrative than just straight
- 8:48Speaker 2: up like extreme mel Those sections are really cool to hear,
- 8:53Speaker 2: like come together in the studio because they're never necessarily
- 8:58Speaker 2: something that's so o I frustrated in the like rehearsal room,
- 9:02Speaker 2: you know, so hearing things for the first time in
- 9:04Speaker 2: that regard with all the layers is always like an
- 9:09Speaker 2: incredibly exciting moment.
- 9:10Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, it's again, it's like a mix of
- 9:12Speaker 1: the two again. To go to the title track, the
- 9:16Speaker 1: riff that ends the album was it's also early on
- 9:21Speaker 1: in the first movement and that kind of like epic
- 9:24Speaker 1: swing that that riff has with the big, biggest like
- 9:27Speaker 1: strummed chords. When I came across that riff, I thought, well,
- 9:33Speaker 1: that's really cool. That really fits. But where the songwriting
- 9:37Speaker 1: was at the time, maybe like twenty twenty sometime in
- 9:40Speaker 1: twenty two, maybe I thought, wow, the song doesn't really
- 9:45Speaker 1: call for something like this. But you know, like a
- 9:48Speaker 1: couple of years later, when with the west of the
- 9:50Speaker 1: song was like pretty much fully written, it was, it
- 9:53Speaker 1: became clear that bringing back that riff, because it did
- 9:57Speaker 1: make a lot of sense and even more sense now
- 10:00Speaker 1: that this whole song had like kind of come together,
- 10:03Speaker 1: and it made sense to put that riff in earlier
- 10:06Speaker 1: on in the first movement and then bring it back
- 10:09Speaker 1: and and like extrapolate and expand it later on and
- 10:13Speaker 1: then even end the entire record on. So yeah, sometimes
- 10:19Speaker 1: unexpected things like that can happen. That like benefit the
- 10:22Speaker 1: whole song and the whole album.
- 10:25Speaker 4: About when when you play these songs live, like you
- 10:27Speaker 4: have to play them in a product logical lord to say,
- 10:30Speaker 4: to keep their cohesiveness to it or does it not
- 10:33Speaker 4: really matter.
- 10:33Speaker 3: If you mixed.
- 10:36Speaker 1: No, I think it's fine to like mix and match live,
- 10:39Speaker 1: you know, depend on the live setting, depending like how
- 10:41Speaker 1: long our like set time is. So yeah, but as
- 10:46Speaker 1: like our listening experience at home, it's cool to just
- 10:49Speaker 1: do it all in order. But for the live setting, yeah,
- 10:51Speaker 1: we can play around with it to keep the keep
- 10:54Speaker 1: the head bangers and the circle pitters going.
- 10:58Speaker 4: So, speaking of live, if You Gotta Each is coming
- 11:00Speaker 4: up to promote the album right now.
- 11:03Speaker 2: We're just in the process of booking things.
- 11:06Speaker 3: This weekend just gone.
- 11:07Speaker 2: We just played the sellout album release show in London
- 11:10Speaker 2: and that was incredible.
- 11:11Speaker 3: You know, it's a real fun time.
- 11:13Speaker 2: But especially speaking like to the Australian fans and stuff,
- 11:18Speaker 2: We're hopefully going to be making a return over your
- 11:21Speaker 2: way hopefully this year, but if not, I'm assuming it
- 11:24Speaker 2: would be early next year. So that's definitely a plan
- 11:27Speaker 2: of hours, you know, definitely taking down album as far
- 11:31Speaker 2: and wide as we can, you know.
- 11:34Speaker 3: Right, well, thanks very much for your time on the album.
- 11:36Speaker 4: Over Space and super Chime is out now and wheking
- 11:40Speaker 4: people get hold of it and find out more the band.
- 11:44Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I mean, if you want to find out
- 11:46Speaker 2: most about the band, you'd be best going to ww
- 11:49Speaker 2: dot Metal Blade dot com forward last Cryptic Shift. I
- 11:52Speaker 2: think everything you need would be on there, you know,
- 11:55Speaker 2: definitely like info on the band and the best places
- 11:58Speaker 2: to access.
- 12:00Speaker 1: Of the records.
- 12:01Speaker 2: But you know, I guess general the internet is everyone's
- 12:04Speaker 2: best friend for that, depending on where you're from, you.
- 12:06Speaker 1: Know, And we have our own start crypticshift dot com.
- 12:09Speaker 1: You can come directly to us and we've got some
- 12:12Speaker 1: cold T shirt design if you like.