The Harder View

Crypsis’ first record. A long-awaited release by some, partially because it was rumoured that Crypsis is actually Angerfist. With the release, his identity has been disclosed and as it turns out, it is not Danny Masseling himself, but a close friend of his. However, this only serves to make the release more interesting. Because this fresh producer is certainly bringing a fresh sound to the scene.

Grzegorz Luzynski was born in Poland some decades ago. When he was six years old, his parents decided to move to Denekamp, The Netherlands. A faithful choice, as it just happens to be the same town where Danny Masselink lived. Both digging electronic music, they befriended each other and when Danny became Angerfist, Grzegorz joined him in the live-acts. Grzegorz, with his wide taste in electronica, eventually decided to take matters into his own hands and started producing himself. Under the alias of Crucifier, he remixed Danny’s track The Path of Hell. It turned out as one of the best songs on Angerfist’s second album, Mutilate.

Upon hearing about Luna and Kold Konexion’s new Minus is More label, with their unique view on hardstyle, he decided to just give it a shot and e-mail them a demo. Three weeks later he was in the studio with one of his idols. The result, Choices, was a quite well-received, extremely hard hardstyle track, released on MINUS 001.

Now, Crypsis is back with the first release linked to his upcoming album, Statement of Intent. He delivers a refreshing four-tracker with a unique, new sound. Get Hit, the collab with Sasha F, it the most nustyle track of the release, but that certainly does not make it bad. With a melody extremely similar to Floorcrushers – Psycho Stylez and an interesting, but not outstanding intro, it is a solid, accesibly dark song. One does wonder why the melody is so strikingly similar to Psycho Stylez. With both tracks being out there but unreleased for a long time, however, no one is able to tell who copied who. Let’s just say it is a funny coincidence.

A2 is a much more, in fact extremely interesting track. Because The 6th Pathway, finally, marks the end of the distinction between nustyle and mainstream hardcore. It starts with a sample and some muffled, round but punchy kicks, a whole which reminds quite a lot of Promo’s downtempo work. The melody, which comes in quite fast, fits both dark hardstyle and hardcore perfectly but is accompanied by clearly nustyle kicks. But it is followed by a very downtempo hardcore outro again. This one can be played in both hardcore and hardstyle sets without any trouble, and it is the first nustyle song ever to have achieved that feat. This ‘stylecore’ – coining that term on the spot – sound is not, as I had expected, a bad thing. I would have imagined hardcore kicks to become clean and pitched, and hardstyle melodies to become even simpler and hardcore. Faithfully, the track that has made the breakthrough is well-produced, dark and solid.

Statement I’s best song is the collab with Kold Konexion though. Sonic Sabotage is backed by atmospheric sounds from the beginning. Extremely influenced by the hardtrance sound, it displays a lot of potential for creating another new substyle within hardstyle. Synth and atmosphere may be trancy, but things never get cheesy, they just serve to create a so far unique track with a lot of party potential.

Hiphop samples announce the arrival of the fourth and last song on the disc, Jealousy. Upon listening to the intro, it starts to dawn that Crypsis may want to work on his kicks some more – none of them are very special, let alone mind-blowing. But hey, it’s only his first release, and they’re certainly not bad. Going on with the song, a short break is followed by an dark, symphonic melody that makes for yet another quality and above all promising track from this new face in the hardstyle world.

Summing everything up, with a debut as good as this, we can only look forward to Crypsis’ upcoming album. All tracks are solid productions, and even though A1 and B2 could use some special feature to set them apart from the masses, A2 and B2 are both completely unique and deserve a lot of praise. One thing that brings the score down a little is the quality of the sounds – not that good. But it’s Crypsis’ first release, and bearing that in mind they’re certainly up to par. You can’t go wrong with this one.

Tracklist:

• A1. Crypsis ft. Sasha F – Get Hit
• A2. Crypsis – The 6th Pathway
• B1. Crypsis ft. Kold Konexion – Sonic Sabotage
• B2. Crypsis – Jealousy

Verdict: 80/100

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