Cryptic Shift - Overspace & Supertime

UK progressive death metal band Cryptic Shift are set to release their latest LP Overspace & Supertime on February 27th through Metal Blade Records. The album is the follow up to 2020’s ‘Visitations From Enceladus’.

I caught this band live about a decade ago supporting Vektor in London, and I was suitably impressed. Fast forward a decade and the band are now a legitimate rising star in the progressive metal scene.

Stylistically Overspace & Supertime hits on a lot of nostalgic sounds to my ears. I hear shades of Piece of Time by Atheist, Dimension Hatross by Voivod and The Key by Nocturnus. It’s a blend of technical death metal, thrash metal , and other sci-fi metal related influences. Some of the shreddy leads sound almost Allan Holdsworth inspired at times (especially on tracks like "Cryogenically Frozen").

The album is 5 tracks only, but has a substantial run time of 1 hr and 19 minutes. It’s a dense beast of an album, with every track containing lots of material to wrap your head around, both musically and lyrically. With so much to digest, this isn’t an album that you can play once and have a really solid opinion on. Even after numerous spins, I still find that it is revealing more and more on each listen. "Hexagonal Eyes" was released as a single, with a retro aesthetic video clip �" it’s a good place to dip your toe in too. Whilst it’s not my favourite track on the album (the 20 minute epics are….epic), it certainly offers the most concise version of what this album has in store for the listener.

Overspace & Supertime is a very strong album which I can see myself playing a lot this year. Cryptic Shift tick off on a lot of the things that I enjoy in heavy music, and subsequently I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to fans of all types of extreme metal, prog metal and technical thrash.

Brilliant album.

Track Listing
1. Cryptic Shift - Cryogenically Frozen
2. Cryptic Shift - Stratocumulus Evergaol
3. Cryptic Shift - Hyperspace Topography
4. Cryptic Shift - Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)
5. Cryptic Shift - Overspace & Supertime

Added: March 30th 2026
Reviewer: Chris Reid
Score:
Related Link: Cryptic Shift @ bandcamp
Hits: 72
Language: english

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