Returning after their 2021 debut Bionic Swarm, it’s been four years since there’s been a proper Cryptosis album. There was an EP in the meantime, but the time makes for an interesting change of dynamics in the Cryptosis camp. Celestial Death, their new album, aims to bring in more atmosphere and more of a cinematic feel compared to their debut. While they still flex some tech muscle, it’s a more well-rounded effort that pulls from an even more broad realm of influences in extreme metal. We spoke to the band’s bassist, Frank te Riet, who also does the mellotron and synths, about the upcoming effort. We discuss plenty about Celestial Death, as well as his hobbies outside music, goals, and dividing up duties as a three-piece act.
Dead Rhetoric: Looking back at The Silent Call, do you feel it accomplished what you wanted in terms of getting you out on the road without having to do a full album?
Frank te Riet: Yeah, we got the opportunity to tour with Cynic and Obscura and we were already writing a new album. But we felt it was a good opportunity to test it in a live setting and have some product for fans we meet on the road. So it was more of an in between step. I think it did pretty well and it turned out good. The video clip was watched many times, so it went well.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel that Celestial Death compares to your debut?
te Riet:The debut album was showing off tech side with the guitar and drums. It was a collection of some really intense riffing. Celestial Death is more melodic, it has more room – the guitars aren’t the dominant instrument on the album. It has more atmosphere.
Dead Rhetoric: How did having the same team this time around aid the sound for this album?
te Riet: We already knew what to expect from them and where everyone’s strengths and weaknesses were, so we could anticipate them. We also have a really good engineer here in the Netherlands, and he’s good friends with us and he has known us for 10 years so he can really push us and get the better takes than we can get with anyone else. We had quite a good team and we were really happy with the results of Bionic Swarm and the performances, so we felt like we wanted to do it exactly the same way as last time. We had it mixed in Sweden and they have some really good feelings for atmosphere. They are on a different level, for at least here in Europe. It’s a really nice way of working with Fredrik [Folkare], he’s a really relaxed dude and very easy-going. So at first, it was really nice and just as nice the second time as well.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned the first album was this collection of intense riffing. With Celestial Death, how much emphasis was there to make it feel like more than that this time?
te Riet: Bionic Swarm was mostly written by our guitar player, Laurens Houvast, and this time it was more written by me. I cannot play this kind of stuff on the guitar. I can play a decent guitar, but not that shit [laughs]. So I had more of my own fingerprint on the music. I wanted to have more room for choirs, mellotrons, and synthesizers. I wanted to give the music more depth and melody instead of everything going at 100 miles an hour every second of the album.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you try to incorporate a more cinematic feel into the music without having it take too much away from the more metallic side?
te Riet: It’s a tricky line. Sometimes you overpower it, but we have different areas. Marco [Prij] is more old school and he is the person who says that we are going too far and to take things back a bit. To give it a bit more rock n roll. Or to give the choirs more room or focus on the guitars in a part. We have different people working on the music in the band but on totally different levels. It’s a good way of working on it.
Dead Rhetoric: Is there anything you can say about the artwork for Celestial Death?
te Riet: We had the demos of all or most of the songs and we sent it to Eliran Kantor. He has worked for so many big bands, we trusted him and gave him the general idea of the lyrics and gave him the demos. It was not a finished product but we had him listen to it and come up with his own interpretation. That’s what he came up with in the end.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve done a bit with sci-fi lyrics in the past. What made you decide to add a more personal touch this time?
te Riet: We wrote a lot of the stuff during the pandemic, and it was a weird time for everyone. Also, it makes you wonder where the world is going and what is your place in it. So when I started writing the lyrics for this album, I thought maybe the first album didn’t feel very personal even if they were personal stories. They were made up stories from personal life, but this time since the music had so much drama and emotion, I wanted to connect that to the lyrics.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you have a song or two that you are really proud of?
te Riet: I think the song “Faceless Matter” is really nice. It talks about your identity. Like what is your identity in the modern world, you get the information from the same media companies, you buy the same clothes from the same stores. Everyone is programmed to be the same. Whether you find your own identity, I think it’s a nice song in terms of lyrics. It doesn’t have too many lyrics in the song, but I think it’s really good, being able to think about the world right now.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you divide the duties between the three of you?
te Riet: I do most of the creative stuff. Laurens does a lot of the webshop and financial stuff. Stuff he is really good at. Everyone has totally different musical backgrounds and influences. It makes us a weird band because Marco has a lot of old school influences like AC/DC and Motorhead. He likes more straight-forward stuff, but he also likes things like Porcupine Tree and more progressive stuff. Laurens is more into Symphony X and Opeth, the more guitar-oriented music. I’m more into black and death metal, but a lot of electronic music like Massive Attack. If you blend us together, it’s got a bit of weird DNA. We don’t really belong to any particular scene. But everyone puts their own unique identity on it, and it is what makes us interesting to listen to. It’s also impossible to switch members for someone else. The whole band would change.
Dead Rhetoric: It does seem like Cryptosis has a sound that feels like extreme metal but it’s hard to pigeonhole it beyond that, which is a good thing.
te Riet: It’s a double-edged sword. It’s hard for booking live shows. In every festival, we are the weird band, so to speak.
Dead Rhetoric: What is most appealing to you about playing extreme metal?
te Riet: It’s a sound, when you listen to this music, that you can imagine all kinds of things. It can be playing in your mind. With death metal, it’s more in your face and black metal is more mysterious. It has more room to interpret your own thing. I think that’s what it does for me. You can listen to music and your dreams will interpret it.
Dead Rhetoric: What sort of goals do you have for Cryptosis?
te Riet: We really want to get out of Europe. We are actually going to Latin America to tour in July. We really want to go to America. We have had some offers but nothing really worked out. It was either too last minute or financially not possible. It’s pretty high on my bucket list. We’d like to go to Japan too. We want to do these if we can manage it. We want to record more albums and explore things we are doing now and dive deeper into it and see where it leads.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you enjoy doing outside of music?
te Riet: I collect a lot of music: vinyl records and cassette tapes. I like to go mountain biking, I do graphic designing too, which I freelance. I mainly stick to music.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s planned for the rest of 2025?
te Riet: The Latin American tour is in July. We are going to do a really big release show here in our hometown on March 29 and follow it with a European tour. Then we go to Latin America and then in the fall we are going to try to go to some territories that we have already had some success in and try to expand upon that, like Greece and Spain. We will also try new territories this time like Sweden and Denmark. Just trying to expand and I hope we can try to arrange something for America.