Q and A: Matt McGachy (Cryptopsy)

By BRENDAN CRABB

CANADIAN technical death metallers Cryptopsy return to pummel our collective senses with new album, and first full-length in 11 years, As Gomorrah Burns (September 8).

It’s the Montreal-based quartet’s first record for heavyweight label Nuclear Blast as they also celebrate 30-plus years of extremity.
“The songwriting was fragmented and awful,” vocalist Matt McGachy reflects. “We like to destroy ourselves to get to the root of our ideas. You take that and add in some Zoom writing sessions, and you get some brutally difficult situations. This album took so long because we simply could not get into a room together.”
Hot Metal: Although it sounds like the writing process was lengthy and difficult, one of the aspects that struck me about the new record was – much like some of the band’s classic releases – that it’s a short, sharp andbruising 34 minutes or so. Was that the idea from the outset?
Matt McGatchy: “We trim the fat, is really what we like to do. We only kept the most important, crucial aspects of every song. Christian Donaldson, the guitarist and producer of the band is really the one that, it’s his album. It’s probably the most Christian album that we’ve ever done (in) this new era of Cryptopsy. Personally on my side, I have a hard time with extreme music if it’s too long. I find that it loses its… you get like extreme metal fatigue= and then you lose interest and your brain just no longer registers the intensity that’s happening, and it ends up becoming just normal. I’m from Montreal so there’s bands like Beneath The Massacre that I love. I love them to death but I can only listen to them one or two tracks at a time, otherwise it’s just too much. So we definitely made it 33-34 minutes on purpose.”
HM: How difficult is it to trim the fat? For example, a member might have their favourite song cut from the album, or a part they really like gets shortened. Can there be egos and politics at play?
MM: “No, no. It’s really Chris’s reins; he’s in charge 100 per cent on this one. We didn’t have to cut anything, any songs or anything. We composed the record we had recorded. There was actually supposed to be a Blasphemy Made Flesh homage medley on the record, but it just didn’t fit the vibe, so we cut that. So the ecord would’ve been an extra like eight minutes long had we included that. Cryptopsy, there’s never any parts that like we repeat long enough and that was one of the mandates for
this record was to include these parts that would repeat and have like a bit more repetition. But there’s never enough. Like with Cryptopsy, it’s always like there’s a few little moments, like in Flayed the Swine. That chug section that repeats, it’s probably one of the longest in modern Cryptopsy, where a groove element is allowed to breathe out that long. Typically, we tend to cut things a tad too short since the new era of Cryptopsy, let’s say. But having toured None So Vile and played None So Vile across the globe (as part of an anniversary tour), and watching crowd reactions all over the globe, we knew that we had to have these elements in the new record repeat just a little bit longer. Never long enough, but always a little bit longer than we had in the
past. There’s no egos. We trust each other. Everyone has their their jobs basically in Cryptopsy, and Chris produces, writes, and we trust him 100 per cent.”
HM: So, it’s 11 years since since the previous album, although you released a couple of EPs in that time.
MM: “The more interviews that I’ve been doing, I’ve realised what actually happened. We wanted to release music more quickly to fans, that was the plan. So we started doing these EPs. But we realised that the EPs took just as much time as doing a full-length album. We would put just as much attention to detail into four songs as we would have to eight. And then Christian Donaldson being the main songwriter, and the one that is basically in charge of all things Cryptopsy, what’s going on right now, writing, production wise. He really had to overcome an impostor syndrome that he was dealing with, becoming the main songwriter after Jon Levasseur, who was the classic Cryptopsy guitarist up until Once Was Not. He composed about half of that, he left and then we did The Unspoken King without him. And then he came back for the self-titled. So Chris has been in theband longer than I’ve been in the band, and I’ve been in the band 16 years. But I think over the past few years, he’s finally crafted his own identity in Cryptopsy without feeling like a Jon Levasseur 2.0 or lite. He’s very hard on himself. So I think that’s the main reason is crippling self-doubt was getting in the way. (Also) we did tour a lot. We did a None So Vile tour, which definitely pushed off stuff for a year. But I think the main reason was that, just Chris coming to terms with that he can write for Cryptopsy.”
HM: So, tell us about the lyrics you wrote for this album.
MM: “I wrote all the lyrics, the concept is mine. So As Gomorrah Burns, Sodom and Gomorrah, I’ve paralleled the biblical fables story with that of the birth of the internet. So Sodom and Gomorrah, as everyone knows, was a utopia of wealth and knowledge. And then humans, as they do, they over indulge in these things. And then negative things came with that. God came and smite them. So I see a real parallel between that and the birth of the internet. The internet is an amazing thing, full of amazing intellectually stimulating technological advances. But there’s been a lot of negative things that have stemmed off because of that as well. So I explored the idea of finding negative things that have happened due to the birth of the internet, such as trolling, online bullying, stalkers, online cults, preachers that take advantage of the elderly and the weak, defamation. And then I just picked one story that really spoke to me, a true life story and then I used a creative writing experiment to expand upon the story, but making it my own, out of respect to the people involved. And I wrote from the perspective of a character in the story and I really tried to keep it true, like outside of myself, outside of my own academic writing proficiency. I tried to write as that character. If this person has never graduated high school, let’s say, I tried to write more simply and very vulgar. A lot of the songs are extremely vulgar, which is something that I’m not. But it fits the tone of the record and the Cryptopsy vibe. And some songs are like really simple. Like the song Godless Deceiver is probably one of the most simplistic lyrics that I’ve ever written but it fits the tone of the record, it fits the song and it fits the concept 100 per cent. That song is about a community that finds out on Facebook… Is based off a story, that a particular female in their village or community was accused of being a witch. Then they found this girl and they beat her to death. So that song is very simple. It’s from the simple mob mentality lyric approach.”
HM: You referenced being in the band for 16 years. I can still remember vividly the major backlash thatgreeted 2008’s The Unspoken King, which was a significant stylistic departure. It was a rough initiation for you. How do you reflect upon that period now?
MM: “I wish that more people have such a warm welcoming (laughs). No, it was rough. It really sucked. I was super excited (when joining). Hypothetically, maybe I had joined the band for the wrong reasons. I wanted to shine some light on my other band, and maybe people smelt that. The Unspoken King was a very strange period of time for the band; there were far too many cooks in the kitchen. There was no clear, unified vision of the direction of the band. And you can hear that on the record. It’s all over the place.I was most definitely not a death metal vocalist; I was a metalcore vocalist. I was not a deathcore vocalist,
as I am still being called to this day. I have grown into a decent death metal vocalist, especially over the past five years, I would say. And why is that? I don’t know, I put the work in and I toured, and I hung out with George from Cannibal Corpse and Travis Ryan. It just happened. I remember the day when I opened up SMN News, I think it was called, the forum, the tracks had leaked, and I was at work. And I remember reading people just destroying The Unspoken King, and I was like, ‘oh, we’re in trouble’ (laughs).”
HM: Do you think that album could be due for reappraisal these days?
MM: “I think some tracks, yes. I was with Flo (Mounier, drums) the other day and we were talking about this. I feel like the track ‘Bound Dead’ was probably the closest thing to us being unified on something, like the vibe of the album could have had. I feel like that’s the best track on the album. So we revisited that track. But I was most definitely not a death metal vocalist (back then), and it’s most definitely not a Cryptopsy album.”
HM: Changing topics, you’re also the host of the Vox and Hops Metal Podcast, which combines your passions for heavy music and craft beer. Was podcasting a format you had long intended to tackle?

MM: “The podcast stemmed from, I was on a sabbatical from my day job, which is where I take care of young children. And I was at home with my young child. We didn’t watch much TV with my children back in the day. So I started, here in Canada, the winter months, it gets dark early. I would spend a lot of time playing with my child and listening to music. But then I felt like I’d listened to everything (laughs), there was no more music left. So I started listening to podcasts because I’d just been the guest with Flo on Jamey Jasta’s show. So I started listening to that, I started listening to Doc Coyle’s The Ex-Man because I played with God Forbid back in the day. And I just became a podcast listener. Then I went out to dinner with my wife, and we were talking about podcasts and things I could do, and I felt like I needed something to do. Because Oli (Pinard, bass) had joined Cattle Decapitation. Chris has his studio, his production company that’s just killing it. And Flo had told me that David Vincent was going to be the singer of his new project, VLTIMAS. So I was like, “oh, shit, I need something, because I’m gonna feel jealous”. I know myself. So I started Vox and Hops. I am honestly a very introverted person, I have a hard time connecting with people. And it’s really been a gift. I can basically sit down and talk to a complete stranger for an hour, and feel like I’ve
created a good rapport with them. And that’s because of the podcast and having conducted over 400 episodes. It’s awesome.”
HM: Your enthusiasm for and knowledge of craft beer is readily apparent on the show, too.
MM: “I love, love craft beer. I love having chats with people. It’s something that’s awesome. And then I started making my own beer collabs; I’ve released over 80 of them. One of them, which Australian brewery Blackflag is on board for, that’s going to come out soon, is part of a global beer collab where there’s over 30 beers that are coming out this year. I have an amazing hop grower and distributor that’s sponsoring the project and are giving a bunch of free hops to everyone that’s involved. It’s all about like moshpits and … what happens in a moshpit for real, because I’ve toured all across the globe, and I’ve seen people from Japan to South America to Europe to Canada to the States. And the moves are always the same, it’s interesting. So (it’s based around) what happens in a moshpit. (There’s) beers like circle-pit, stage dive, wall of death, head-walk. Each beer
describes what this movement is, and what happens.”
HM: Any famous last words?
MM: “Get ready, everyone – As Gomorrah Burns is coming September 8 via Nuclear Blast Records. It’s a banger. It’s eight tracks right in your face. You will not regret checking it out.”