Take a look at the cover art for Apogean‘s debut full length and guess what genre this band is (if you weren’t already spoiled by reading the genre tag). Tech death album covers have a tendency to wear the genre on their proverbial sleeve, with bright colors and an angular sci-fi inspired logo that gives way to very glossy production. This formula can be rather exhausting for most people, but I’ve grown to like these styles of extremely virtuosic albums in my journey as a metalhead. So where does this leave Apogean? Cyberstrictive takes the band’s already pretty impressive EP and expands upon it to make an enigmatic technical death metal album that, depending on your tolerance for tech death, will either leave you intrigued or annoyed. While this album does things correctly, it also suffers missteps along the way. Wasting no time with an intro piece, this album kicks off with “Bluelight Sonata”, which does a good job showcasing what Apogean does correctly: hooky, catchy riffs. Unlike their contemporaries in the tech death scene, this band focuses more on writing riffs than writing wanksterpieces. There’s a noticeable groove in this track as well, and it leads perfectly into album highlight “Thousand-Yard Glare”, which has the coolest slammy breakdown I’ve heard in a tech death album in the last couple of years.
I’m also reminded of label mates Demon King at some points during this album, specifically on “Imposter Reborn”. The riff-craft on this song is meaty in the best way, leaving an infectious tune that will worm its way into the listener’s brain with each successive listen. Unfortunately, while the riffs are present on this album, there are also weird songwriting choices that leave me frustrated. Notably, while it’s admirable a band like The Zenith Passage already has other bands modeling their sound after them, the “brdt brdt brdt” guitar tone makes its way onto this album in spades, and is a tiring listen as Cyberstrictive goes on for its 43 minutes. Other weird stylistic choices are the Within the Ruins-esque guitar effects in “Distance (Of Wails and Walls)” and the last two minutes of closer “An(t)imus”, which ultimately closes the album with a whimper rather than a bang, being ambience instead of cutting the song when the notes fade away. This album is frustrating with each successive listen. I have a high tolerance for tech death, but Apogean tried to experiment with way too many things on this and ended up making a mess as a result. Perhaps on album two, the deathcore influence that permeated Cyberstrictive will not be as prevalent.
