Album Review: Cripper - "Hyena"

The thrash revival that began some twelve to eighteen months ago has nearly grown stale.  What we’ve seen is a stable of bands who understand the spirit of thrash, but ignore the most effective tenets of its execution.  Speed speed speed is the diet of the day, with nary a thought given to pace and cadence and musical design.

Until Cripper, and their new album “Hyena.”  Here we see a band on their fourth release completely master the very idea of thrash that’s persisted since the genre’s heady inception.  There’s a lot of breathable space on “Hyena,” multiple chances for the artistry that underlies the violence to show through.  It’s particularly unique to see a European thrash band demonstrate such command of the very thing that made American thrash popular in the first place – the album sounds like a gritty march more than an unattended chainsaw, and this is to Cripper’s benefit.

At the risk of sounding cliché, Cripper showcases songwriting that smacks of the most effective days of Slayer.  There’s a permanent crunch threaded throughout each track, but the individual guitar tones of Christian Bröhenhorst and Jonathan Stenger are rounded off and unencumbered by distortion.  This gives them the flexability to crush the masses with the power of “The Jackhammer,” but also allows the quasi-playfulness and energetic soloing of “The Origin,” the latter of which might well be the album’s best cut.

Make no mistake, Cripper plays to both strengths equally well.  The band masterfully avoids the pitfall of relying totally on percussion for mood and pace, which gives them a chance to venture down a few different avenues and avoids the complications that arise when the pressure is on to keep up with a double kick.  This lets Cripper present a perfectly rendered old-school thrasher like “Tourniquet” and place it next to the newer-school pounding of “7”” or “Animated Flesh.”  While the entire album is thrash, the variety within that scope is both remarkable and refreshing.

Naturally, what makes “Hyena” so effective are the riffs.  Bröhenhorst and Stenger have compiled an army of head-nodding infectious tunes that positively drip with the kind of tandem acrobatics that we hold dear, not only from Hanneman and King, but also from Tipton and Downing.  There’s a history lesson between the lines in the fresh sound of “Pure” or “A Dime for the Establishment.”  To reiterate, the pacing of “Hyena” is its greatest strength, a perfect analog to the greatest thrash acts of yore and something too many bands overlook in attempting to create their own brand of thrash.

The only loose end here, it’s sad to say, is the brave vocal performance of Britta Görtz.  Her screaming and grunting is abrasive against the smooth thrash tones (if they can be called that,) that populate the record.  Something about the juxtaposition of her yelling and the music beneath is incomplete, though it’s hard to put a finger on exactly what’s wrong.  In a vacuum, her choking bark is on par with anyone in the genre, but the timbre doesn’t quite mesh like the band would hope once the tracking is complete.

It took two spins for “Hyena” to really catch on with me, so be patient if the album doesn’t thrill you the first time.  That’s hardly a bad thing – I’ll never complain about an album that holds some secrets back to be discovered later.  Nevertheless, Cripper’s “Hyena” is one of the most impressive thrash records since Lazarus AD’s “Black Rivers Flow,” and should not be missed.  This is a great album and should put Cripper solidly on the map with momentum going forward.