Day: March 13, 2015

The Ukrainian band Apostate will probably be unknown to most, although their birth dates back about twenty years ago. This is because, as often happens, after a demo and an ep, the band stopped the activity to return in 2007 with a compilation containing these two old works. The first full length arrives in 2010 without leaving big traces; different is the case for this album that, on the contrary, shows a band able to propose a death doom without frills but undoubtedly effective in its sober linearity. Almost an hour of music that winds on the coordinates outlined at the dawn of the genre, then rather unbalanced on the death side, with homeopathic doses of gothic digressions that are engulfed by a lumpy sound, led by distorted riffs and effectiveness inversely proportional to their relative cleanliness. The opening track Solar Misconception represents the band’s ideal manifesto, with its leaden atmospheres partially diluted by a melody that hardly makes its way, also because of a not really memorable production that, if on one hand can be functional to the Apostate‘s style, on the other hand tends to flatten a bit the sound of the whole work. Time Of Terror remains however a convincing album in its entire development and all in all different in style and approach compared to what we usually hear from Ukrainian doom bands.

2015 – Ferrrum