As I get older and hopefully wiser, I find myself wanting life to become simpler and less cluttered. When it comes to my death metal, I want more caveman idiocy with a greater emphasis on scuzz, murk, and swamp. Based on these sage guiding principles, Apparition’s sophomore opus Disgraced Emanations from a Tranquil State seemed a safe flyer for me to grab out of the promo sewer. Hailing from the City of Angels, their sound is anything but heavenly, ripe as it is with the ghastly cavern creeping of Incantation and early Tomb Mold. However, like recent Tomb Mold, these cave cretins also aspire to proggy soundscapes, and over the 38 minutes of Disgraced Emanations, they attempt to weld these disparate sides of their personality into something cohesive and effective. Lord knows a wedding of expansive and refined musical adventurism to brutish OSDM thuggery is a tough one to make work and domestic bliss with such a mismatched couple is often a pipe dream. Can Apparition find that sweet spot? How much marriage counseling will it take? Should they hold off on merging their finances? All important questions awaiting answers.
I’ll say this about Apparition: when they get things right, I really enjoy what they do. Opener “Asphycreation” leans hard into their love of Incantation, with crushing, nerve-flaying riffs struggling to stay above the copious murk their sound generates. It’s almost like a lost cut from Onward to Golgotha and they had me eating out of their filth-encrusted hand by the first minute. The first hint of their proggy bent doesn’t arrive until the solo at the 2-minute mark and it’s a very modest, Death-centric little interlude before they return to crushing skulls. As the song shambles on, ponderous doom segments and eerie keys arrive to increase the oppressive atmosphere and everything is in proper balance. This is the kind of stuff I can digest for hours and I hungered for more. More is delivered on “Imminent Expanse of Silence and Not (or Not)” with more Incantation-isms and riffs that sometimes recall the fretboard fury of The Chasm.1 That’s a can’t-miss pairing and for a while, nothing misses. However, over the nearly 7 minutes that follow, solid ideas and crushing grooves start to give way to proggy flair that sometimes feels superfluous and faffy, especially the final minute which feels like dead space. It’s still good overall, but it has extra padding that could be worked off with better self-editing.
Album centerpiece, “Paradoxysm” is an 8-minute plodyssey that winks at genre forefathers like Immolation along the way and even includes Peaceville Three-style gothy keys to punctuate the grim doom segments. But things become overly monotonous and by the sixth minute, it feels like the song has run out of steam despite interesting odes to Death’s later era scattered throughout. “Inner Altitudes, Light Transference” is a strange interlude that starts like something from ambient artist Lustmord’s infamous Stalker album before veering into odd, jazzy wonking that reminds me of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.2 Nearly 8-minute closer “Circulacate” is quite lively with a cool Voivod vibe snaking in and out, but it suffers from the same over-indulgence as “Paradodysm,” with good ideas stuck alongside lesser ones. By the end of the album’s journey, it feels like Apparition have a ton of potential, but need to focus their writing further to fully achieve the optimal blend of brains and brutality.
The players here are very talented. Miles McIntosh and Andrew Jay Solis (ex-Cormorant) are highly inventive guitarists and they generate an impressive collection of flesh-rending riffs and crushingly massive grooves while also proving capable of soaring, stimulating solos and oddly jangled harmonies. Taylor Young (ex-Nails) holds his own on bass and Andrew Morgan impresses with nimble kit-work while delivering appropriately disgusting sub-basement gurgles. The band is skilled at weaving dark, ominous atmospheres and moving from brutality to lighter fare and back again. Their only real flaw is in their writing, which needs to be tightened up and scaled back.
I’m not always the biggest champion of proggy excess in death metal, but I enjoy much of what Apparition do here. They don’t go as far over the ledge as Tomb Mold did on their recent outing, and gloriously caveman-esque pummeling awaits around nearly every corner. If they can smooth things out and excise the unsightly bloat, they could do great damage to ears and hearts. Good and almost very good, this is well worth a loud spin. This is a band to watch out for.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Profound Lore
Website: apparitiondeath.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: March 22nd, 2024
