(Former NCS writer TheMadIsraeli returns after a long absence with the following review of a new album by the Toronto death metal band Apogean, which was released on July 10th by The Artisan Era.)
It sounds so fucking stupid to say, but a pretty good barometer of a good album especially if you’re on the AuDHD spectrum like I am is “does this album make me pay attention to it while grinding on Diablo 4?”. Diablo has oddly enough been a crucible through which many albums have been deemed good or bad in my mind; if something can catch my attention through the demands of playing the game especially at end-game sweat levels it means it stands out or it stands on its own.
Apogean’s now sophomore album Waste Where Life Begins is a great record, and one that oddly in my opinion takes quite a divergent path from their debut. Cyberstrictive was good, don’t get me wrong, a good but rather standard tech-death-metal/deathcore middle ground album. I liked it. My life was in turmoil at the time so it wasn’t exactly a priority list to write about in my life but it got a few spins.
Waste Where Life Begins has within the span of a week already gotten more spins out of me than Cyberstrictive ever did. Partially because those scant deathcore touches have been entirely abandoned, which to me, I’m sorry, is just always objectively good, and also due to a commitment toward an oddly more atmospheric, almost blackened death metal direction. The serpentine riffs are still there, but there’s a much greater emphasis on riffs and rhythmically impactful sections that are designed to seize your attention.
“Daughter Of The Oak”, the record’s opener, might as well just be a riff-driven black metal song being carried by a waltz sonic aesthetic, while the album’s title track gives me more than pleasant memories of Rivers Of Nihil back in the Monarchy days with precision grooves and an atmospheric dressing, when the band was actually a standout force in metal (oops did I say that?).
But the thing that I think stands out the most overall is that this is mostly a blackened death metal album at its core. Sure, you get a couple of songs that harken back to more what they started out as, with brutalisers like “Lie In Cinder” which are much appreciated, but the album is at its strongest for sure when it’s dealing with riffs of an esoteric nature and wants to sit in this pocket of heaviness, ethos, and engrossing atmosphere.
Because of this, I find songs like “Nassaru”, the heavily Incantation-influenced “Hologram (Singing Silently on an Empty Stage)”, and the album’s closer “Black Smoke, Bleeding Earth” to be the big standouts. This is definitely an album that gets better as it progresses.
This is not the first time we’ve seen a modern tech-death/deathcore hybrid band make this shift toward a more blackened death metal direction, but I personally eat this shit up every time. Waste Where Life Begins is very good. It stands out when grinding Diablo 4. It’s also a very efficient, effective, and well-written blackened death metal record that feels like a complete transformation from where the band started. It’s worth your time.
https://apogean.bandcamp.com/album/waste-where-life-begins
https://linktr.ee/apogean
https://facebook.com/apogeanofficial
https://instagram.com/apogeanofficial