Review by Sonny for Apparition (USA) - Feel (2021)

This is most definitely centred right on my death metal g-spot! The instant it's gloriously downtuned, cavernous riffage infested my earbuds, I was hooked. OK, it's Autopsy worship does absolutely nothing original, but is so well executed and is just so much to my taste that I don't intend to criticise it for not diverting from the template set down by Chris Reifert and company more than three decades ago now. Although the album as a whole is somewhat generic, in that they don't try to do anything unexpected, the band have a genuine grasp of what this corner of the death metal world requires.

The riffs are massive with some real killers amongst them, although they don't push the needle much beyond medium-paced with very little blasting even on the pacier sections, the beginning of Perpetually Altered probably marking the album's peak velocity. The subsonic vocals even rival Reifert's growls for sounding like the ravings of some infernal, abyssal demon and are a big part of the draw of Feel for me. The downtuned riffage and generally cavernous atmosphere make it feel more doomy than it actually is, as they don't stray into purely death doom territory as much as you think, slowing the pace to a crawl only for a short time during most tracks. Each of the tracks are artfully constructed and the variety in pacing throughout is worked very well. An extra layer of atmosphere is supplied on the most doom-laden track, Nonlocality, with the inclusion of thin but atmospheric keyboards that reminded me of the keys used by Thergothon on their classic Stream From the Heavens with the thinness of the keys being in marked contrast to the meaty heft of the guitar sound.  The production is very effective with a cloying thickness to the atmosphere, whilst still possessing sufficient clarity to do each of the instruments justice and never descending into an indiscernable morass.

This is most definitely the kind of release I can revisit time after time as I live for this kind of cavernous sound, absorbing it like plants absorb sunlight.