Review: SETH “Apocrypha”

SETH “Apocrypha”
Minotauro records

To be honest I was very surprised when I heard first notes of “Apocrypha”. Just like the most, or even all of you I was associating the name of Egyptian God of Death, especially in juxtaposition with title of album, with Black, Death, maybe Thrash or something connected in some way with mentioned sub-genres of Meta (alternatively with Gothic and stuff like that). And in fact in Poland there’s SETH which plays Black/Death Metal. But they have nothing to do with this one – except the name, of course!

This one comes from Massachusetts, USA. Unfortunately that’s all what I succeed to pin down. But somewhere I read that this is not so young band. Unfortunately that’s mission-impossible to countercheck, so… The main person here is multi-instrumentalist and frontman Gerald “Garry” Stafford. Of course he got help of two other musicians – bassist Wayne Guffey and drummer Billy Lee Bedwell here. Since I couldn’t find any band’s biography anywhere I have no idea which SETH’s stuff is it (I found information about two other ones re-released by MINOTAURO REC.) and so on. It seems that I probably have too big expectations here, but I like to know something about reviewing (by somebody else or me – it doesn’t matter) band. Of course music is the most important here. Everything what I found was two reviews of “Apocrypha” and three songs on YouTube! Maybe this is well-known band for listeners of such music, but since it was never my cup of beer I hear about them for first time. I mean, I always liked to listen to such stuff from time to time and did it with pure pleasure, but I was never super-hyperlover of that…

Anyway, SETH is up to the eyes in deep 70’s. And it’s first of all about music which guys serve us. This is solid and firmly based on classic as well Rock. I hear here influences of many bands which mostly are recognized as precursors of Heavy Metal or at least Hard Rock. So it’s rather easy playing, even if we can hear that musicians has big abilities and create music (as I know that’s Gerald who decide here about how song “seems”) with imagination. Riffs are quite sharp, but we have here some solos, “crying guitar” and other stuff like that. Billy Lee drums energetically and variously as on music like that. Somewhere I found comparison of Gerald’s vocal to Ozzy Osbourne. Well, personally I don’t hear some huge similarities. Maybe Garry has a little similar tembre, but only a little in my opinion. If I’d have compare his voice to somebody than it’d be another vocalist. But I’ll be malicious and don’t mention his name. Instead you’ll have to listen to this and recognize (or not) it with somebody.

Of course, as it should be in music like that tempo is slow. But guys play ballsy as well! The fact is that there’re some ballads here, too. Well, as I noticed Rock bands like to play such songs sometimes. Anyway, even if they’re atmospheric and acoustic as well, they’re not some romantic candles. To sum up I can recommend it to people who like at least from time to time listen to classic and want to listen something else than RUSH or LED ZEPPELIN.