adg211288 The Finnish death metal act Krypts have been going for eight years now and released their debut album Unending Degradation (2013) a few years ago. Now back with a two guitar line-up with the addition of Jukka Aho to the band, Krypts is back with their second full-length offering, Remnants of Expansion (2016).

A short album of just 33 minutes of music, Krypts have changed their song-writing style somewhat since Unending Degradation. Where on their debut album the band played old school death metal with some underlying doom leanings, with Remnants of Expansion we find a band who are starting to now bring their doom metal influences into the bigger picture. This is something that they waste no time in making apparent with the opening track Arrow of Entropy. At 10:51 in length this one song takes up a good chunk of the album all on its own, though in truth there are just five tracks in total here. Slow doom metal riffs are combined with harsh vocals to create a death-doom sound that comes over as heavy, menacing and sinister but other sections take the speed of the riffs up a notch in a nod to the old school death metal sound that is Krypts' roots.

Shorter tracks follow, starting with The Withering Titan where the older Krypts sound starts to re-emerge more in earnest, though still with some doom elements. The band impressed me with Unending Degradation with this kind of sound and that continues to be the case here, more so as a matter of fact due to the doom metal elements providing Remnants of Expansion with a stronger level of variety. I'm not one to usually appreciate what the intentionally old school sounding death metal bands have to offer, I find them bland and generic even - pale shadows of the actual death metal of the time they try to imitate/pay homage to. Krypts though... I have to say that these guys come across as being the real deal, holding my attention in a way that most other old school death metal acts completely fail at.

Albeit of course they're a real deal who show evidence of evolving into more of a fully-fledged death-doom act rather than a straight death metal act. My overall impression of Remnants of Expansion is that the death and the doom elements are being presented more or less evenly at this point, with not a track that doesn't at least give a nod to other prevalent style. It's a sound which works for Krypts here, but I find myself most intrigued by the prospect of hearing more stuff from them that is along the lines of Arrow of Entropy, which I see as their crowning achievement to date, and the short title track, which adds in some clean guitars to the sound that, if anything, only darken the atmosphere of the music even further, something that it didn't have an issue with already thanks to the decidedly unpolished production which suits the music perfectly.

Krypts do the old school death metal thing better than most, in fact I can't leave this review with calling to attention the excellent Entrailed to the Breaking Wheel which starts off with some doom influence before eventually turning into quite an aggressive composition, but I feel that their music takes on more of its own character when they start to really channel the doom. That's something which can only aid an extreme metal band like them in producing songs that stand out and stay with you after the album stops playing, which is actually the core of the problem I have with other old school death metal bands, though of course they do their more death metal based tracks better than most as well. Overall, Remnants of Expansion proves itself to be a highly accomplished album from Krypts and is surely their best work to date.