APOTHEOSIS - FARTHEST FROM THE SUN
I was really perplex about this
album after looking to one of the worst cover ever seen, something more similar
to a video-game image instead of an extreme album, fortunately the first song
immediately impressed me with its very epic and majestic form of symphonic black
metal, nothing new but a very skilled form of that genre. The drum-machine have
a so powerful sound, a very successful mixing and a so excellent programming
that its typical problems are totally left apart.
If the third song "Raise the Dragon Banner" isn’t exciting as the
previous, with its thrash-death elements not so well linked to the overall
atmosphere, "Raise the Dragon Banner" show a certain versatility and
some interesting keyboard elements, acquiring a crescent pomposity. This song
goes far away from the symphonic black metal borders, acquiring some sort of
baroque influences.
The only thing that I can clearly notice is that the Apotheosis music lacks of a
sort of uniformity, every songs have a different perspective but in a similar
spectrum, for sure the dark atmosphere of symphonic black metal isn’t so much
part of this album’s DNA, this is much more a fantasy inspired and epically
oriented one. Apotheosis a re a band in the middle, not too obscure, not too
epic but also not too orchestral and avant-garde, it can be something
interesting but the problems come out when everything seems a bit indefinite.
Samoth show another time to be a good scout for this up-coming acts, Apotheosis
have showed a great potential, now only the future will say if they will create
something to remember, for sure for me they have a bit to adjust their sight.
Ild