Apopheny of Life

While I have not been familiar with too many Romanian metal acts until recently Costin Chiroeanu is a pretty well-known artist within the scene. His works for bands like Ghost, Napalm Death or At The Gates made him a household name and one of the go-to guys for remarkable and spectacular visuals. The impressive cover artwork of “Apopheny of Life” is what caught my attention in the first place. I am a sucker for such mystical pictures with various shades of blue and green so I had to check out the content of this record. Before turning to the music I would like to recommend everyone interested to check out Costin’s page twilight13media.com.

Saddayah play a quite technical and also slightly brutal death metal style. There are quite a lot of blast-beat sections combined with heavy hitting riffs and some very sick soloing. The instrumentation is really spectacular here. Drummer Theo deserves a special mention as he is a real beast working his ass off behind the kit. He keeps the speed high but also knows when to slow things down a bit to take a breath before the next relentless attack. His fills and breaks never feel unnecessary but well placed throughout each song.

The two guitar players offer a nice combination of traditional death metal riffs akin to some famous US bands and sometimes a bit more modern ones. Names like Immolation, Deicide or Monstrosity come to mind but Saddayah are not just copy cats. You will find the typical stoic and buzz-sawing chords as well as choppy riffs and sections where the rhythm and the tempo varies within a very short timeframe. It speaks for the songwriting skills of Saddayah that this kind of elements never feel overly chaotic but make sense looking at the bigger picture of the songs and the whole album. The rhythms are always groovy and even in the more sophisticated sections the patterns seem well structured and each break is there for a reason.

Despite the relentless and aggressive sound there are catchy and atmospheric moments and some of the hooks are going to stick with the listener after the second or third spin. Harmonies that seem a bit disjointed at first work as transition elements before the trademark chords of the respective song are repeated again.

Singer Petrut also has done a great job on “Apopheny of Life”. His mid register tone makes him stand out a bit from the pack and his delivery is pretty varied for a death metal album. I needed a bit before being able to fully appreciate his raspy approach but after a while he seemed to be the missing piece perfectly fitting to the instrumentation.

The production is quite modern and while maybe not 100 % on par with the works by the more famous peers mentioned above it is more than serviceable. The drums have a nice punch and the guitars got that classic crunchy tone although they could have maybe been mixed a bit more into the foreground. That being said these are very minor complaints for an otherwise fantastic piece of traditional yet fresh piece of death metal.