You’d never have guessed that a band called Apothecary traded in doom metal, would you? With five tracks spanning 46 minutes, ‘Drifting Towards the Ancients’ find this US four-piece trawl the depths of both the spiritual realm and sonic frequencies. Downtuned and grinding low and slow, it’s heavy alright.
Expansive, brooding dronescapes erupt into bursts of gut-wrenching violence, and the effect of the album is cumulative. Gradually, it grinds you down as it sucks the air from the room and darkens the corners. ‘Things reach a Swans-like crescendo of throbbing bleakness five minutes into ‘Gamma Soul’, representing something of a pivotal point in the album’s structure.
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That isn’t to say it gets lighter or easier for the remainder: the final track, ‘Into the Cauldron is eleven and a half minutes of slow-simmering mystical turbulence. The vocalist sounds like he’s being boiled alive as the guitars melt into oozing larva.
a href=" http://apothecaryar.bandcamp.com/"> Apothecary Online
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