Q and A: Matt McGachy (Cryptopsy)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

THE last time Canadian death metal supremos Cryptopsy visited Australia, their Sydney show was at the Newtown Social Club, aka the Sando. Since then it’s been closed down, reopened as a trendy mini-golf venue and then closed down again.

Meanwhile, Cryptopsy have maintained their dominance within the genre they helped to popularise with a series of EPs and two further albums, the latest of which, An Insatiable Violence, is proving one of their most well-received. Vocalist Matt McGachy opened up to us about the different approach they took with the new release, and how much they’ve grown as a band since the dreaded The Unspoken King.

Hot Metal: It’s been ages – ages! – since Cryptopsy played in Australia. It’s been so long that the venue you played in here in Sydney doesn’t exist anymore.
Matt McGachy: “Really? Well, that’s sad. That’s something that happens in many cities across the globe, sadly.”

HM: You’re finally coming back now. What brings you down here this time?
MM: “We did want to come back two years ago, to be honest with you. We are very good friends with Jino from Slamman Booking Asia. We’ve known Jino for many, many years – since 2019, and we’ve always had a good relationship. So when we go over to Asia for a tour, in my mind I’m like, ‘Well, we’re so close to Australia and New Zealand that we might as well add a week or two and go and hang out with the fans’. It did not work out in 2023 when we went to Asia, but it did work out this time. That’s how all this came together and I’m excited to be coming back to Australia. We have not been there since 2016, when my daughter who is now nine, was a baby. So my wife will be less mad at me for leaving this time!”

HM: That is a long time, but it’s also only been two albums since then.
MM: “Correct. I think we did The Book of Suffering… I think we dropped a tome, one of our EPs, and then we dropped two albums. The pandemic gave us a little bit of an excuse not to come and play across the globe, in our defence. We are looking forward to coming back. I know that Cryptopsy has a great relationship with Australia. I know Chris has very fond memories of his first time down there with Lord Worm back in 2006, I want to say? So Cryptopsy has a great relationship and we’re happy to be coming back and strengthening those ties.”

HM: How has the new album been received?
MM: “It’s been very excitingly very well received. It blew away all our expectations. We challenged ourselves to write a record far quicker than we normally do. After As Gomorrah Burns was released, we immediately started pushing ourselves to write. Because I had – I had, we had – put a deadline that we wanted to drop a record two years after As Gomorrah Burns came out. We accomplished that task, and it was a monumental task because writing a Cryptopsy record is a tremendous feat. There’s a lot of notes, there’s a lot of beats, there’s a lot of screams. There’s a lot of subtle sounds. It’s a difficult thing to accomplish. We pushed ourselves. We did that by writing on our days off, and we did that by not resting and writing in our hotel rooms, and while all the other bands on the tour package were resting and taking it easy, we were in the room writing for An Insatiable Violence. And it really, really worked well because it would be like, What is working right now, in this live setting? What worked last night in the set? We need more groove, we need darker elements, we need a little bit more melody. To push ourselves and write in this uncomfortable situation just paid off really, really, really, really well. The fans seem to have really embraced An Insatiable Violence, which is a reassuring thing as an artist, because when you write a record as condensely as we did … as an anecdote for that, we wrote so close together that when Chris came home and started putting down guitar parts, he was like Oh! This riff is in that song. We wrote so close together that the riffs were very similar, so we had to go back and redo things and change things. Then we finished it and submitted it to Season of Mist and thought, Is this even good? Because we were so close to it. So to have the fans come and state that it’s the best since None So Vile is really the best thing. It’s very gratifying that the fans are embracing this new era of Cryptopsy as much as they’re embracing the legacy.”

HM: That’s great, because I want to take you back to an album that wasn’t particularly well received. You know what I’m going to talk about here, right?
MM: (laughs) “Yes I do.”

HM: The Unspoken King. A lot of people really hated that record. It’s still not particularly popular, but recently I’ve noticed some fans who’ve come along since then – because, obviously, that was a long time ago now – and may not have been Cryptopsy fans then have maybe reassessed that album to some extent. Have you noticed that?
MM: “It happens live, at shows. I’ll have a fan come up to me and whisper to me – because they don’t want their fans to hear – that they actually do like The Unspoken King. There is a little bit of a resurgence of interest there. We are currently doing a 30th anniversary of None So Vile. There will be no 30th anniversary of The Unspoken King! Not happening. Chris is not a fan of that record. I revisited it a year ago, and I’m not a big fan of it. The band was in a really strange place. John Levasseur had just left. He wrote quite a large chunk of Once Was Not and he doesn’t get enough credit for that, to be honest. Obviously Alex and the others had a lot of input as well but John did have his fingers in the pie for that. The Unspoken King, he was not a part of it. Chris was a brand new member. I was a brand new member. Brand new members tend to not want to stir the pot or shake things up too much. So Chris and I are not into that record. I think the biggest, biggest problem with that record, and I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, is that the band’s reaction to the fans not being into the record was the biggest problem with that record. Moreso the actual music on that record. Yes, it’s a strange Cryptopsy record. Yes it possibly should not be called a Cryptopsy record because it’s extremely strange and out there, and experimental, and not the standard death metal record. But the band’s reaction, telling everyone to fuck off and being very not mature in the response to our fans genuine distaste of what we just did, is the worst part of that record.”

HM: I’d say that you learnt a lot from that, and that was not the way to go. But in some ways, the hate was so intense I can almost understand why you reacted the way you did.
MM: “It was immature. We have the best publicist right now at Season of Mist. They’re wonderful. If I were to pull anything like that, I would get a phone call directly saying ‘Matt, stop!’  There was never a conversation with Century Media telling us we should stop. We’ve definitely grown a lot, we’re far more mature, and I’ve definitely grown a lot myself, obviously from when I was 24 years old. I’ve grown into being a death metal vocalist, now, too, which is something that took me several years to get my feet into. All the touring, all the experimentation, hanging out and having late night conversations with Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation, George from Cannibal Corpse … it’s all very helpful and it’s all thanks to the fact that I didn’t quit. I stuck with it. A lot of other singers would not have had the nerve to continue, and props to the band for always standing behind me, beside me, and encouraging me to become the singer I needed to be.”

HM: And it’s been nearly 20 years now.
MM: “I know! That’s crazy. It’s a huge part of my identity. It’s crazy to think that – almost half of my life.”

HM: Does it get tougher as you get older to maintain your voice?
MM: “No, it’s become so easy of late. I’ve found the pocket. I had the most reassuring experience two years ago with my friend Enrico, the vocalist of Hideous Divinity. He’s an ear, nose and throat doctor and he’s conducting a research project on the effects or the lack of effects of extreme vocals on the human voice. We played in Rome, which is where he lives and where his clinic is, and he took me in and put a camera down my throat and up my nose so he could look at my vocal cords. I performed ‘Lascivious Undivine’, and I been on tour for two weeks straight by that point, no days off, and there was absolutely no damage. All the stress of my voice just went away. Now I take it easy. I use to do a bunch of warm-ups, I used to drink all the teas… Now I just relax and enjoy myself.”

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