Review: Apophys “Devoratis” [Ultimate Massacre Productions]

For movement to Netherlands the time has come. I’m not sure if I wrote it earlier, but as long I’m into the underground as long was wondering why the most of Dutch bands come not from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hague, Utrecht or Breda, but from these smaller cities or even towns. The same is in case of coming from Kampen APOPHYS. However, the fact that in Kampen live something like 53.000 people doesn’t mean that there’s nothing interesting in that. It was a member of Hansatic League for example.

Anyway, we’re here to talk about music, first of all. So, the band was formed in 2012 and the guys play in almost unchanged line-up. The only exception took place in 2016 when guitarist Koen Romeijn was replaced by Dave Meester. Devoratis is their second album which we had to wait for almost three years. It was released already in January this year, so there’s a chance that at least some of you have and enjoy this CD. Guy don’t play in some complicated terms and call their creativity “Technical Death Metal”. And indeed it is. There’s everything that should be in piece of this genre: faster parts, some lower ones, broken riffs, growling and so on. But in my opinion we have some elements from other genres of music here, and it’s easy to recognize them, I guess. Some riffs and vocalizations, even if they’re mostly, as I wrote above, connotes for me with this more modern version of HC. But that are only episodes which happen rarely and don’t change music’s character in any point. And this is exactly what guys say they play. You can find some guitar tricks and so on. Generally songs’ structure is quite complicated, of course not too much what means not more, not less, but that this is definitely Death Metal – as brutal as it should be. Besides, we have of course guys show their technique here and this is not only about guitars. Tempo isn’t too fast generally, but Dutch know very well how to speed-up. Anyway, this is really various with that on Devoratis. There’re songs like “Matters Unresolved” and “What We Will Be”. They’re both real Death Metal tracks, but if you’ll not hear the difference between them then it seems you’re stone-deaf.