Heavy Song of the Week: Crypta Bring Death Metal Majesty with “A Portrait of Decay”

Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, we highlight the new single “A Portrait of Decay” from Crypta. Crypta call to mind At the Gates at their best, conjuring a similar level of decrepitude and gothic decay that their peers doing more melodic death metal often fail to capture. The occasional sins of the genre, such as privileging Iron Maiden-isms over creating something that is fundamentally death metal, are utterly absent here. There is a real sense of emotional depth here, the same kind of melancholy that haunts Opeth and colored the windowpanes of Katatonia’s early heavier work. All of this without covering the truly tremendous guitar work, including numerous solos that marries technical acumen to a clear emotional goal in a way a lot of players striving for more sensitive approaches to death metal struggle with. But don’t let my words fool you: There are rippers here too, not to mention a spectacular nylon-string acoustic solo to close the track. The tremendous playing, which includes some eerie bass work and a drum arrangement that threads the needle perfectly b...