ALBUM REVIEW: Reaperdawn – In Aphelion
As the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Sebastian Ramstedt, and featuring members of NECROPHOBIC and CRYPTOSIS, IN APHELION can rightly be regarded as a supergroup. Their second album Reaperdawn centres around cults and sun worship – and with their band moniker meaning the furthest point away from the sun, everything fits neatly together on this Swedish black metal album.
It feels particularly apt that the album’s penultimate and title track was written about the notorious Heaven’s Gate cult – a strange religious group in America whose leader Marshall Applewhite brainwashed his followers into committing mass suicide in 1997. The song, according to Ramstedt, is about the followers’ last hour waiting for the vessel in the sky. Listeners of a certain age should be able remember it as a particularly chilling and terrifying news story at the time, but equally, captivating. Those three adjectives sum up this sophomore album from IN APHELION rather well too: chilling, terrifying and captivating in equal measure.
The first thing that becomes clear with this album is how slick the production values are; mixed by Tore Stjerna, this is top-notch stuff, but without compromising on crushing heaviness and it certainly doesn’t sound watered down or commercialised. From the opening bars of Fields Of Nadir, Reaperdawn gets off to a killer start and marches into a mysterious and deathly maelstrom of blackened fury. Tracks are crammed full of ferocity and darkness, with tight melodies that writhe their way deeper into the brain with every listen.
IN APHELION clearly take traditional influences from the thrash masters too, as there are plenty of screaming guitar solos and headbanging riffs thrown into the chiaroscuro, which is balanced out with slower paced moments of reflection and a mystical ambiance. There is a distinctly occultish vibe to these eight tracks, and it hits in a similar vein to NIFELHEIM, WATAIN and DISSECTION – all of whom manage to create music with depth and ritualistic horror despite sounding filthy, cold and raw.
A Winter Moon’s Gleam and The Darkening are both mid-paced stompers packed with dark energy and a WITCHERY-esque swagger – intense and furious rhythms with an unrelenting aura of frostiness. There’s a feeling of foreboding and destruction in They Fell Under Blackened Skies, with devastating riffs that lead into an all-out frenzy capped off by the icy vocal rasps of Ramstedt. With a stark contrast of light and shade, When All Stellar Light Is Lost incorporates filthy SODOM-esque riffs and a crepuscular darkness, as this album meanders deeper into the abyss and, if anything, just gets stronger and stronger until all fades to black with Aghori.
With complex song structures, tight musicianship and excellent production, IN APHELION have crafted a highly listenable album of Swedish Black Metal.
Rating: 8/10
Reaperdawn is out now via Century Media Records.
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