By Dig Dirkler
UK prog-death visionaries Cryptic Shift are back in the wormhole — but this time, they’re not just revisiting the cosmos… they’re rewriting its laws. With Overspace & Supertime described as an alternative reality to their debut Visitations From Enceladus, the band dive deeper into interdimensional storytelling, tonal callbacks, and narrative escalation — all while pushing their “Phenomenal Technological Astrodeath” philosophy to new extremes.
Overspace & Supertime is described as an alternative reality to Visitations From Enceladus. When writing the new record, did you approach the concept more like a continuation of a story, or did you treat it as a chance to reinterpret the universe from a different philosophical angle?
We do explore some brand new locations and ideas, for example in opener Cryogenically Frozen and a lot of the title track Overspace & Supertime, but a lot of the enjoyment of writing this album came in revisiting the same tonalities and flavours that were present in Visitations From Encealadus. Because it’s a different character here on a different journey, we have a chance to revisit stuff but also progress the story and reveal some extra things especially towards the finale.
Your music balances extreme technicality with very deliberate narrative pacing. How do you ensure the storytelling remains clear and engaging without sacrificing the intensity and complexity of the compositions?
Because everything is intertwined, from the dynamics of the narrative to the dynamics of the music. It has to be a great song that flows satisfyingly as well as a continually exciting and mystifying visual adventure. For example Hyperspace Topography, it’s about The Recaller travelling through a wormhole essentially. It’s probably the most straightforward song and tonally the most neutral. But for a structure and to create tension, her ship crashes amidst the 4D landscapes and she has to work her way back to the craft and blast back off to reattach to the hypertrails and continue her journey. For that whole middle section we break the song down to a calm clean section and gradually ramp it up to the highest intensity where she rejoins the hyperspace paths. To close out the song she faces some extreme peril upon exiting the wormhole which tees up the next song, which is also the most dissonant and brutal. So Hyperspace Topography has a sort of outro which shifts the key and time signatures completely, reflecting the narrative suspense.
The term “Phenomenal Technological Astrodeath” has become closely associated with CRYPTIC SHIFT. Do you see it purely as a stylistic descriptor, or does it also represent a mindset or mission statement for the band?
It’s a personal phrase that we feel we can stand behind proudly, so for us it definitely covers the grounds of both of those you said.
Compared to the debut, what do you feel are the biggest compositional or structural risks you took on Overspace & Supertime, and were there moments where you had to pull yourselves back from going too far?
I believe in every moment of this record, so I do not assign the word risk to any of it, it’s all Cryptic Shift through and through. However, there was a whole other section to ‘Hexagonal Eyes’ that charted the course of The Recaller journeying through the desert at the end of the track. The Alien Sorceress will be following her trail through the crystal sands ready to save her from the Enceladite attack you hear at the very end! When it was becoming close to 10 minutes in length it was obvious it didn’t need to be on this album. I’ve actually saved all of those parts I wrote for a later album, it will be heavily inspired by Al DI Meola’s ‘Casino’ record.
Science fiction clearly plays a central role in your creative process, from Moebius-inspired artwork to lyrical themes involving alternate dimensions and temporal disease. How much external sci-fi media feeds directly into your writing, and how much emerges organically during jam sessions?
I think most of it emerges from my own mind or me coming across scientific research articles, seeing a cool looking word and investigating deeper, it’s never anything very specific that has a through line in our entire story, but I like to give weight to certain ideas or phrases by referencing some real science. Striking artworks also make my brain imagine our story happenings immediately. There was an issue of Analogue Science Fiction magazine from 1989 I have, with a fantastic cover art of this humanoid figure in a bizarre stone-like suit leaping through zero gravity to some orbiting facility. The short novella inside is really completely different to what I imagined but I took those initial thoughts from the cover and expanded it into the final movement of our last track. The Recaller and the Sorceress are holographically transported to the planet of a foe and are chased down these floating platforms, a bit like what I remember where Martian from Loony Tunes would hang out. The pair then change into some strange alien jumpsuits for a zero-G spacewalk to reach a wormhole that’s protected by a hexagonal mechanical structure.
Working with Jack Helliwell on production and Greg Chandler on mastering gave the album a very distinct sonic weight. What qualities were you specifically looking for in the sound of this record, and how did it differ from your goals on the debut?
Honestly we were looking to match what we did on Visitations From Encealdus and simply improve on it. The clarity on the drums was something I think we really did some great work on, Ryan researched a lot of techniques and we experimented with a bunch to get to our final sound. We also reduced the reverb by a fair amount from the debut, as we move a step away from the caverncore style of underground death metal and lean towards the tight thrash metal sound of the late 80s. Everything else was very organic and natural as before, the guitar tones are all re-amped through real amplifiers and cabs after first being fed through Jack’s analogue desk. The solos and a massive amount of the sound effects however were done directly without capturing to re-amp first. Greg was then the final touch of class to give it the professional seal.
Both live and in the studio, what pieces of gear are absolutely essential to achieving the CRYPTIC SHIFT sound — particularly when it comes to translating such dense, technical material to the stage?
My EVH 5150 I’ve come to have my own take on the plain distortion tone that has loads of presence and lows, it satisfies my Dimebag-Pantera roots of chunky tones but also works in a full band setting. Then my solo tone has an MXR EQ in the loop with a very specific configurement that fires it through the mix like a high powered plasma caster. The ISP Decimator noise gate also is essential, it’s one knob and sorts everything out with no worries. Regarding my FX pedals you’ll have to come to a show and peek over the monitors for a look!!!
If The Recaller and The Alien Sorceress assembled a hyperspace prog-death warband to conquer the multiverse, which CRYPTIC SHIFT member would immediately derail the mission by triggering a temporal paradox, alien war, or catastrophic gear failure — and how legendary would the disaster be?
John Riley would totally trip over an alien tentacle and trigger the wrong hyperspace route, revealing that we were just in an episode of Red Dwarf all along…
With Overspace & Supertime, Cryptic Shift haven’t just expanded their universe — they’ve deepened it, tightened it, and weaponized it.
This isn’t indulgent prog.
This isn’t retro thrash worship.
This is narrative extremity calibrated with scientific precision.
The wormhole is open. Enter at your own risk.
Categories: Cryptic Shift, Interviews
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