Woof
Aephanemer, a project by a french dude with guitar that kept spamming people commenting on melodeath Youtube videos about his instrumental tracks, now a full band with vocals, drums and even bass. Full album is coming soon this year, preceded by a single Unstoppable. So, can they succesfully add vocals and lyrics to an already great music? Let's see.
Song start with familiar synths, present on the "Know Thyself" EP years earlier, guitar soon follows bringing many interesting and thoughtful riffs. This is no ordinary guitarist right here, Nif proved himself many times with some interesting, progressive and catchy ideas. His maturity is clearly hearable here, there is no mindless dragonforce-ish sweeping. Supplemented by well placed bass guitar and rich drumming it brings even more flavor to the general sound. While I can't find anything to add to the drumming (love the crazy blasting), I would definitely go wild with bass guitar and add some more sounds there, but it's played safe here and it's cool too.
But back to the most important part- vocals and lyrics. They are here, and they surprisingly fit to this whole riff rollercoaster of sound, something I tried to do once (I was trying to write lyrics to one song from EP). Delivered by female growls they surely bring something rare to the table. Vocal style reminds me of a love child of Insomnium's and Omnium Gatherum vocals. The girl surely can hold the sound in place, I can only hope she treats her throat well. While the vocals aren't anything outstanding I see a lot of possibilites for improvement in the upcoming years. It's good, and I'm sure it will be much better. The hardest part was fitting vocals to the general prog-riffed music, and it went very well.
The one thing that does not stand as well in comparison are lyrics. While sung very well they are mediocre at best, especially coming from the single/flagship song.
They use a very broad vocabulary here, with some fancy words here and there, but I can't really make much sense from them, the feeling is very vague, and not as catchy as it could be (and let's be honest, from a single you would expect something more catchy to ring in your mind for months).
I'm fully aware it's not easy to write lyrics for ever-changing riffs of Nif, but in those 3 years since the EP was out it could be possible. While I'm a supporter of creativity it's good to sometimes look how other bands handle this stuff.
Insomnium is telling the story very clearly with easy to understand English, while still having a lot of mystery connected to it (Song of the Blackest Bird).
Omnium Gatherum is using so simplistic English that it could be seen as an insult to the listener, yet the catchyness is often a major factor and in the more thought-out songs it can be very open to interpretation (Living in Me).
Here in Aephanamer I feel that something is missing, a tiny bit of hook.
But these are better than my lyrics, if something doesn't rhyme then it's not good for me :P
I googled "more rhymes" , I shit You not it was one of the first results
Overall the song is very good, and improvement from the EP is very visible. There is still a room for improvement, so I can hope the band will be busy with making music, building a name for themselves and sticking together through the hard times that are coming. But if they do, if they won't give up then we will have a great addition to a melodic death metal world. A band that is truly unstoppable.
Le petite score:
Vocals: 8/10
Bass: 7+/10
Drums: 9-/10
Guitars: 9/10
Additional:
++ general progression through the song, a non-stop journey
+ synths are back from EP, nice to hear similar stuff on a new stuff
++ fitting vocals to this sound mess
- lyrics are vague, no me gusta
- could be more catchy in the chorus, even though the vocals try to save it
Total score that never actually matters: 90%, it's good, will be even better
le link to le song
