Aphelion – Lay

July 2008 • Shadowgraph Records

I'm usually not a big fan of "scary" media—horror films and video games, that sort of thing. Scary music, on the other hand, I enjoy (maybe on some kind of masochistic level, but still). Aphelion's Lay is probably one of the first albums I ever heard that really freaked me out. It doesn't really do it to me anymore, but it's still a really neat experience.

Most of the music could be called "death industrial"—a very heavy, fast, highly-distorted, and dark kind of industrial. There are beats buried pretty deep down that are easy to miss, and would probably be missed if it weren't for the repetition in the samples and bass lines overtop them. And pretty much all of Lay is an incredibly dense wall of sound—bass hits, screeching distorted noises, voice samples, heavy glitches, all assaulting the listener at high speed and high volume. Every once in a while, something more upbeat will play, only to be mercilessly cut off by something incredibly dark (see "Chest Cavity"). It's all really well done.

It can get a bit tacky, though; tracks like "Circumlocution" have a beat texture and pattern that reminds me of some of the sillier speedcore stuff I've heard (especially repetitive cymbal crashes), which poorly contrasts with the darker and more serious sampling and ambience in other tracks.

I was also disappointed by the fact that most of the tracks are incredibly short—around two minutes on average—which isn't really enough time to get a good mood going for the most part. This is sort of a compliment in a way, because many of the tracks should have gone on a lot longer (like "Frozen Birds" of "Be Still", one of the best and creepiest). On the other hand, because of some of the unnerving and disturbing samples, maybe that's a good thing.

In general, though, Lay is pretty darn good as long as you aren't listening to it alone and in the dark. It's not the best industrial album, or the best scary album, but it does its thing well enough.

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