Bandcamp The album is called Cosmic Crypt Session. It was recorded at Cosmic Crypt Studio. Typhuzz are a trio from Karlsruhe who formed in 2022, this is their second record, and naming it after the room they made it in tells you most of what you need to know about how it was made and how it wants to be heard.
Jordi Kühn and Max Mörmann recorded it, someone credited only as Hubu mixed and mastered it, Selina Muhme did the artwork, and it comes out on Studio Heinz Records. Six songs, twenty eight minutes.
Six songs, five records
That is the first thing that hits you. “MOG” opens at a sprint and then falls into a loose, funk-adjacent groove halfway through. “Heavy Eyes” is a fuzz-soaked slow burner with a long wah solo in the middle. “Crystal Ships” is the cleanest and most melodic thing here, almost classic heavy metal in its bearing. “IO” drops the melody entirely for hoarse shouts over a wall. “High Again” is airy and almost bright. “Reefer Madness (puff pufff magic)” closes on seven minutes of slow psychedelic doom with the vocals not arriving until nearly two minutes in.
A band doing that across six tracks is either unusually curious or has not decided yet. I lean toward curious, because the playing is consistently assured, but the record genuinely does not settle, and twenty eight minutes is not long enough to make the wandering feel like a plan.
What holds it together
The bottom. On every single track between a quarter and nearly a third of the total energy sits below 250 hertz, which is a lot, and it does not waver no matter what style the song is wearing. Whether the band are playing fast, slow, clean or filthy, the floor is in the same place. That is what makes the album cohere at all, and it is clearly a decision rather than an accident.
The production is raw, roomy and unpolished, with the drums sounding like drums in a room and the bass often doing the heavy lifting the guitars leave undone. For seventies-facing heavy rock that is the correct register, not a shortcoming, and it is a relief to hear a record in this lane that has not been squashed. The vocals are clean, dry and set well forward, which exposes them, and mostly they carry it.
Where it gives ground
“IO” is the narrowest track on the album by a distance, three and a half minutes that stay at one level throughout, and it comes third, right where the record could use a lift. The closer has a similar problem in reverse: seven minutes is a long time to spend on a single idea when the five tracks before it have each lasted under four and a half.
So
Worth your time, with a caveat about shape rather than substance. The individual songs are good, the room sound is genuinely likeable, and a German trio three years old playing this confidently is worth watching. What is missing is a sequence that adds up, and a record this short does not have the space to make six directions feel like one journey. Play “Heavy Eyes” and “Crystal Ships” first. If the low end and the lack of polish work on you, the rest will too.
The constant on this record is the bottom end. Every track carries between 23.8 and 31.1 percent of its total energy below 250 hertz, with “Reefer Madness” highest at 31.1 and “Crystal Ships” lowest at 23.8, and that floor stays put across six songs that otherwise have little in common. Tonal centres run 1717 to 2182 hertz, so the record is dark throughout, and treble above five kilohertz stays between 11.5 and 13.4 percent. The dynamics are where the songs separate: “MOG” opens 17.5 decibels between its quietest and loudest passages and “High Again” 11.4, while “IO” holds 5.7, “Crystal Ships” 6.0 and “Reefer Madness” 6.4. Average levels sit between -12.3 and -15.1 decibels, which is unusually restrained for the idiom and means the master has not been pushed. Peak-to-average distances of 10.8 to 13.7 confirm it.
Standout tracks: Heavy Eyes, Crystal Ships, Reefer Madness (puff pufff magic)
