APES “Lullabies For Eternal Sleep”

VOIDCEREMONY “At The Periphery of Human Realms”

By Dr. Abner Mality

Going to indulge in a look at two short, sharp jabs of extremity from a couple of rising acts. Neither of these lasts very long, with VOIDCEREMONY’s effort really being a single while APES’ EP lasts about 12 minutes. Nevertheless, both of these releases give us a good insight into how these bands operate.

Let’s look at APES first. Hailing from the North American metal hotbed of Montreal, these anthropoids are just freakin’ HEAVY. Each of the four tracks is brutal, but in a different way and you can’t really peg these guys to any particular subgenre...at least, based on what we hear here. “Cornwall” starts with a burst of noise before slamming your skull to atoms with murky, thunderous riffs that sound like hardcore going into overdrive. Think of the late, lamented WEEKEND NACHOS when it comes to this one. “Devour” starts with a Neanderthal drumbeat before turning into massive, sludgy death-doom with a relation to “cavernous” death metal. In contrast, “No Will To Live” dials up the speed about 1000%, resulting in a grindcore track that would do NASUM proud. Less than 10 minutes in and APES is killing everything in sight. The EP ends with “Sore”, the first ¾ of which is just blackened noise like MERZBOW before ending with a brief explosion of metallic hardcore. This is one nasty EP and I’m curious to see if APES can sustain this attack for a half hour or more.

VOIDCEREMONY have even less time to make their mark but they manage to do just that. The band boasts members from CHTHE’ILIST, MOURNFUL CONGREGATION and INCANTATION and for 2 out of their 3 tracks, they play a technical but murky death metal full of cool riff changes and ever-morphing angularity. “Entropic Reflections Continuum” comes across like IMMOLATION colliding with OBSCURA while “Tenebrous Lucidity” is shorter and a bit more to the point, although still pretty fluid. There’s a minute and half soundscape between the two that doesn’t amount to anything, but the two tracks I hear from VOIDCEREMONY really have me interested in their forthcoming full-length.

I’d say both bands are worth keeping an eye on!

TRANSLATION LOSS RECORDS

APES

20 BUCK SPIN

VOIDCEREMONY