Shocking, I know: the stoner rock guy fell hard for the new album by Scandinavian retro rockers Kryptograf. What can I say? I’m an easy mark, one made easier by the fact that since their 2020 self-titled debut the group have been churning out an intoxicating brew of stoner rock and doom in the vein of classic Black Sabbath mixed with more modern sensibilities – think Witchcraft in their heyday. And had Kryptograf stayed the course with album number three, the wonderfully titled Kryptonomicon, I would have been content. But rather than stayed glued to a proven formula, there are enough tweaks here that I came away even more impressed with how the band can absorb influences and spit them out in a cohesive whole uniquely their own.

Yeah…I really dig what these guys are putting out.

I didn’t come to Kryptograf at their birth. For me, it was the arrival of 2022’s The Eldorado Spell, an intoxicating spell of twisted retro doom that has the murk and ominous tonality all my favorite doom rockers had. One listen to “Asphodel” has me running to grab a copy of the vinyl before it sold out, and it was there I also discovered their self-titled debut. Even murkier and lo-fi without falling into unintelligible garbage, the production rather gave the songs a presence you could smell. Sure, that smell was a heady mi of pachouli and weed, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It was a stoner doom miasma I was content to sit in until the end of my days.

That changes with Kryptonomincon. Opener “Beyond The Horizon” shows the band embracing a much larger, fuller production, even as their guitar tone gets drier and more 70s. Guitarists Vegard Bachmann Strand and Odd Erlend Mikkelsen share vocal duties, and they’re an incredible pair. The songwriting gets a huge lift, too: I love how psychedelic the middle section gets, huge swaths of reverb draping the ringing chords in a blanket before that killer hook returns. Second track and second single “The Blade” is equal to the opener, a raging hard rocker that gets your fist in the air even as you slush to the rhythm.

But where Kryptonomicon really shows its strength is on “You and I” – this thing practically reeks of Queens of the Stone Age, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. Conceptually the second half of the record has more of a serious doom nautical vibe, and I also get some specific Mastodon references listening to “From Below”, especially the more rocking section. Absolutely love the odd subversive sounds in the background, accentuating the underwater vibes. That segues into “Lost At Sea” and those ringing guitars that open it again bring strong Mastodon vibes. So now you’re mixing yet another of my favorite modern bands into your formula, Kryptograf…you had me at “hello”, sirs…

By the time of epic closer “The Gales” Kryptograf have embraced organs and subtle R&B chords into their unique blend and I honestly have no idea how much better this album could be, or how much more it could play into all my particular fancies. Easily the best album the band have constructed in their short career, it’s an instant end of year contender for me, and an album I’ll be playing endlessly. It’s been an incredible year so far for stoner and retro rock/metal, and we’re only in the first week of March. But I’m telling you now: Kryptonomicon is going to be hard to beat.

-Chris

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Kryptonomicon is available Mar 7 from Apollon Records. For more information on Kryptograf, check out their Facebook page.