Apostolum-Winds of Disillusion

Moribund
2014

I don't like being lied to or mislead. Italy's Apostolum didn't lie to me, but opener "Intro (Light Into The Void)" most certainly mislead me! Imagine a grand piano intro that channels the spirits of both dark metal and goth rock. Now imagine that said intro leads into blackened doom metal with rock sensibilities. So far so good right? Well, then the vocals of one Mr. Meba kick in on "Unworthiness and Decay" and that's all she wrote. There's flat vocals and then there's Meba. Yes, they are that bad and any hope that this one might be worthwhile or salvageable are thoroughly flushed down the crapper. Granted the actual music/musicians that backs up Meba does not exactly install confidence that the black metal scene is moving onward or upward. Forget lighting up the night or anything. This group, which is at best a mediocre collective, couldn't light up a child's bedside night light! Despite ten years in the business, which is a long time in this day and age, the band sounds as if they have just crawled out of some dark hole somewhere and, after trying and failing at forming a reasonable My Dying Bride tribute band, they struck out on their own with little to no song-writing ability at their disposal. And the results speak for themselves! How anyone can combine what would be interesting elements like goth rock, dark metal, black rock n' roll, doom and black metal (while also incorporating not only acoustic grand piano/keyboard parts, but even brass!) and still make it all sound so trivial and dull is beyond me! Even if you could overlook the flat vocals, which would make you a much more tolerable man than me, how could anyone (reasonably) expect you to ignore what amounts to a glorified high school, death and despair-obsessed, band project? I can't and I would have no right telling others that they needed to. Avoid this one at all cost and whatever you do please do not encourage any new/up and coming bands to try their hand at the same thing! Think of humanity!