APOPHYS Devoratis

Dutch death metal act Apophys has been around since 2012 and ‘Devoratis’ is their sophomore album. Featuring members of God Dethroned and Toxocara this is a band with both experience and a clear vision and approach to their writing – song structure above technicality. The music is technical indeed, but you can clearly hear that composing good and well-arranged songs is their main objective. ‘Devoratis’ is a concept album, based on a story written by vocalist Kevin Quilligan. I won’t get into details about the concept, but in short it’s a story of an unlikely union of two forces against an intergalactic race led by a zealous leader known as Consul….the rest of it is for each and one of you to discover. It didn’t take many minutes of listening to conclude that this is premium quality death metal, and after several rounds that impression has just been strengthened. The songs are very well structured, catchy and melodic, but still sufficient brutal and technical to keep it interesting. The vocals are mainly excellent and relatively deep death growls, but there are also a few more hardcore’ish screams here and there. Fortunately that particular vocal style is kept on an acceptable level. The production is really good, warm and organic with sufficient space for all details to shine through. ‘Devoratis’ can easily be recommended to any fan of death metal and in my humble opinion it’s one of the better death metal albums of this year.

Discography:

Devoratis (2017)

Prime Incursion (2015)