Six years separated Cryptic Shift’s debut and its follow-up. Visitations From Enceladus arrived in 2020 as a record that didn’t behave like a debut, nearly eighty minutes of science-fiction death metal that announced a band already thinking in cinematic terms. Overspace & Supertime runs almost exactly the same length, follows the same four members through largely the same sonic territory, and still manages to feel like a forward move rather than repetition.
The Leeds quartet, Xander Bradley on guitars and vocals, Joss Farrington on guitars, John Riley on fretless bass, and Ryan Sheperson on drums, frame this album as a parallel adventure to Visitations, following a new character called the Recaller in pursuit of an Alien Sorceress across asteroid fields, cryogenic chambers, and the stranger corners of deep space. The story unfolds across five tracks that rarely behave as single songs; they’re more like chapters, each containing several arguments. “Stratocumulus Evergaol” moves through six distinct named movements, from “Informant On Capathine” through to “Fossil Cargo”, and the scope of the ambition is matched by the execution. The band shifts between explosive riffing, quieter passages that let the fretless bass carry the melody, and stretches where the arrangement seems to hold its breath before resolving.
Riley’s fretless bass is worth singling out. Most metal bass disappears into the low-end furniture. Here it registers as a full melodic voice, fluid and slightly liquid, with a quality that works almost as a countermelody to Bradley’s guitars. It’s particularly clear in “Cryogenically Frozen,” the nine-minute opener, where it threads through the faster sections with something that sounds closer to jazz phrasing than metal convention. The song cycles through multiple distinct ideas across its runtime and earns every minute of it.
“Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)” is the most immediately compelling thing on the record, which is a relative term. The central hook arrives around the four-minute mark, after considerable setup. When it does, it lands with the weight that only comes from patience: the song has earned the moment by then. At just over ten minutes it’s the album’s most focused piece, and the one that tends to cut through on first listen before the rest of the record has fully settled in.
The title track closes everything out across four movements, the final section “Within The Hexagonal Tide” functioning as a genuine ending rather than just a stopping point. Mike Browning contributes theremin throughout, and its presence feels most substantial here, adding a texture that makes the sci-fi concept feel genuinely inhabited rather than just lyrically gestured at.
Jack Helliwell recorded and mixed at DC Studios, with Greg Chandler mastering at Priory Recording Studio. The result is loud and detailed without the compressed flatness that kills dynamics in heavier records, there’s a real difference between loudness and volume, and Overspace & Supertime has both in the right balance. Headphones reveal layers that a single listen through speakers won’t catch.
The fretless bass work and theremin are mixed with unusual prominence for the genre, they never feel like novelties but contribute to a sense of space and strange texture that distinguishes Cryptic Shift from bands who chase similar tempos.
Standout tracks: Cryogenically Frozen, Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm), Overspace & Supertime
Cryptic Shift have made the same album twice and made it feel like progress. That’s a harder trick than it sounds.
