EP REVIEW: Lullabies For Eternal Sleep – APES

Quebec extreme metallers APES have weathered their fair share of storms in crafting their fourth EP, Lullabies For Eternal Sleep. Marrying the grinding violence of NAILS with the post metal heft of CULT OF LUNA, the band sought to capture sheer sonic nihilism and annihilation. That journey took them as far as obtaining work permits due to demands placed upon them by restrictions in their native Quebec. The resulting EP is a condensed blast of nihilistic fury, designed to be appreciated as a single, 12-minute whole. 

Cornwall begins with menacing ambience before descending into a grinding storm of roars and blast beats. It only briefly slows down to a stomp but it’s still bone-rattlingly heavy. Devour takes a slower but no less intense approach. The cascading drums that open lead into a swirling maelstrom of post-metal guitars that wouldn’t be out of place on a CULT OF LUNA record, capped by vocalist Alexandre Goulet’s rabid howls. APES manage to condense the heaviest moments of what would usually be a much longer song into just four and a half minutes, never letting up. With No Will To Live they channel modern-era NAPALM DEATH with their death-infused grind and a churning riff used to give brief respite from the chaos. Closing on Sore, APES strip away almost all of what’s come before, leaving unsettling ambience and noise with mere hints of drums. 

Showing that barriers between genres are ultimately meaningless, APES throw in everything from metallic hardcore to lurching black metal and grinding death metal without a seam in sight. The contributions of FULL OF HELL’s Dylan Walker help to elevate Lullabies For Eternal Sleep from merely savage to something deeply unsettling and misanthropic. Adding to that is the mixing and mastering by none other than Will Putney, whose back catalogue of excellence speaks for itself. It would be perhaps all too easy for a band so dense and deceptively intricate to have details such as the tremolo guitar work vanish into the mire, but here each instrument is audible and has space without sacrificing the claustrophobic atmosphere of the work.

Lullabies For Eternal Sleep offers up naught but nihilism and misanthropy, presented in a densely-layered, devastatingly heavy package that crosses genre boundaries without care. It’s a melting pot of extremity that any fan of heavy will surely find something in. 

Rating: 7/10

Lullabies For Eternal Sleep is set for release on January 7th via Translation Loss Records.

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