Aephanemer
Memento Mori

French quartet Aephanemer have understood that you need things to set you apart to get noticed, a strange name and a striking artwork is certainly a good start. But of course you also need the music to set you apart from the faceless masses of uninteresting and anonymous music that plague the world today. And melodic death metal isn’t exactly the most unique thing you can do today, there are plenty of bands coming and going in that genre these days but if you have some ideas you can still make it sound fresh – just like Aephanemer do.

The elements of classical music, with Slavic folkish elements and symphonic grandeur gives their melodic death metal a fairly fresh touch even though they probably push all the right buttons to please even those who are afraid of things that isn’t the genre cliché. I think they make it sound fresh with their elements of other things, strong production and growling that is fairly good as well – they are certainly among the more interesting new bands I have heard in this genre lately even though yesteday’s reviewed album by Athorn is slightly better. But that was Athorn’s second album and this is the debut album by Aephanemer who only has a well-received EP from 2014 in their catalogue.

It is a rather long album with 54 minutes playing time, but good variation makes it feel a lot shorter. In fact, I think that this album grabs my attention from the first note and then keeps it for the entire duration that is ten tracks and 54 minutes. Ten great tracks, ten dynamic tracks that makes good use of the band’s wide musical spectrum and it is quite hard to put the album away as you want to play it again and again. I think they hit the mark really well with this one and it is certainly one of those albums that make this webzine worthwhile for me because without fresh and good albums I would never do this.

Thumbs up and hats off! Great album that comes very highly recommended, I actually think you should have a look at it as it has everything any fan of melodic death metal would want. And it will look good in your record collection as well; I don’t really think there is any point not to get this album. And it is not only a good debut that promises a lot for the future, it is also one of the top albums of this genre this year. All I can really say in the end is: don’t miss this one!

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