Overspace & Supertime is the ideal progressive thrash metal album. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
Release date: February 27, 2026 | Metal Blade Records | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
Often along time’s eternal march, searching for the next big thing that’ll illuminate my life for some time, it can be hard to know exactly what you want or when it’s right for you. All you know is when you see, hear, or play it, it’ll resonate with you beyond most measures, turning you into a frothing fanboy and anyone that has the misfortune privilege to hear you talk about it will either be elated and maybe inspired by your passion or leaving others weirded out by the fanatical commitment. Six years ago, I heard an album that got me pretty damn close to that level of raw joy. This year, I heard another from the same band that fully got me there.
Welcome to Overspace & Supertime, the album I will confidently say upfront is now my album of the year and it’s not even close. It’s hard to believe it’s been over half a decade since Cryptic Shift released Visitations From Enceladus, an album that easily made our 2020 album of the year list and it’s easy to see why, at least if you like cosmic progressive thrash metal. Grand concept, ripping riffs and solos, celestial atmosphere, and a cinematic tone to bind it all together.
In our post-Blood Incantation prog-ambient spin world, maybe it feels like Cryptic Shift are hopping on the trend, but they’ve been with this shit for over half a decade and the dedication shows here more than ever on Overspace & Supertime. Each song is a mammoth, even the shorter ones that don’t crack ten minutes. You think the band can’t get more immersive and spacious, the next one surpasses it. You think you’ve heard the best riff or melody on the album, something on the following track dunks on it with it’s balls in the former’s face. As beautiful as this album is, it’s also a nasty work of profound one-uppance that’s only concerned with outdoing itself which is honestly how it should be.
When I first heard the lead single “Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)”, I was astonished in a way I rarely am leading me to run the track back enough times to make up an hour of my life. Days later, I’d get the itch and replay it. Almost immediately, this became my most anticipated album of the year and this song alone has great examples as to why. The warping intro that meanders between thrashy quickness and progressive death metal quirk, the chills-inducing solos that sound vastly different from the headbanging ones (there’s some overlap here and there), elements found across the album and yet “Hexagonal Eyes” only sounds like “Hexagonal Eyes”.
The other four songs are adventurous in a way that you don’t hear too often. The title track’s sweeping intro is a beautiful showcase of instrumental interplay with robust bass locking hands with tensioned guitar melodies and calming, almost whimsical drumming. It eventually erupts into a red alert metal broadcast shot across the stars, the veritable climax of a complex and realm-spanning story that, honestly, I can barely get the grasp of. This ain’t no Star Wars. Intro “Cryogenically Frozen” betrays its jazz-inflected opening seconds with a virtuosic guitar solo with the arc of a burning comet. Some of the album’s best melodies can be found here, like golden stardust glittering in the sky. This music sounds like the kind of wondrous shit Roy Batty monologues about seeing in his life at the end of Blade Runner before dying.
One thing I love about Cryptic Shift is the absolute commitment to their craft. For fuck’s sake, even the instrumental breaks and solos are given names in their album’s lyrics, showing that the band see their music as more than a mere platform to tell a story, it’s part of the story, an active voice with things to say. Gone are the boring days where you had to refer to a solo by its timestamp within the track, now we can have full-on conversations with named song segments.
‘Man, I really think my favorite solo is ‘Precipitous Mandate Of The Auditory And Telekinetic‘, what’s yours?‘
‘I feel you, but I gotta say I love the finality of ‘Shootin’ From The Hip In The Sonic Temple‘ more, bro‘.
The actual song lyrics themselves are often drowned in unassailable science-fictionese, but again, commitment. I can appreciate the world building and extensive use of vocabulary to service the themes because it gives the world a substantial alien and unknowable feeling that’s complemented by the music. They’re also delivered so voraciously and convincingly that it’s nearly impossible not to get on board even with those little barriers in the way. I’d also potentially be hypocritical if I didn’t at least mention the album’s length – nearly 80 minutes is a tall order for any band in any genre to me, but guess what? It doesn’t feel that long. Each minute is replete with great if not new ideas, nothing’s stale, it’s all monolithic in design. In the end, the music will speak for itself and those that attach to it will, hard.
I can’t talk up this album’s greatness enough. It’s Cryptic Shift absolutely nailing their sophomore effort and driving the technical/progressive thrash metal landscape forward, kicking it out of earth’s stratosphere as many have before them. Still, this is among one of the best efforts in that lane I’ve heard ever. Overspace & Supertime dazzles and defies Cryptic Shift‘s previous efforts in skill, scale, and execution. This time, once in a blue moon, everything aligned to make this project hit in all the right ways despite its ambition that should have scuttled it to lay among the black of space like common astral trash for all time.
Band photo by Murry Deaves
