Apollyon Sun
Sub

At the dawn of the '90s, the legend of Celtic Frost lay buried and shattered, mortally wounded by that incredible artistic (and credibility) suicide called "Cold Lake" and nothing could save them, including the subsequent works: the mediocre "Vanity/Nemesis" (truly the swan song of the Swiss combo) and the still intriguing collection "Parched....", to revive the ancestral relics, the artistic inspiration, the grandeur of a band that knew how to push the limits of extreme metal a step (or, more correctly, a decade) further with each record release.

Fallen into the deepest compositional oblivion, the avant-garde metal prophet Tomas G. Fischer managed only years after the last Celtic Ice-associated release (the aforementioned collection published in 1992) to re-emerge under the aegis of Apollyon Sun, a moniker he had carried with him since the Frost's breakup (indeed, this was supposed to be the name of the never-released last pre-split album and also the title of the last unpublished song included in the aforementioned collection): the painful resurrection was thus realized with the EP "God Leaves [and Dies]", to later acquire a more defined and precise dimension with the album under review, "Sub," released in 2000 by the little-known label Mayan Rec.

Gathered for the cause were guitarist Erol Unala (for a time a member of the subsequent Celtic Frost reunion), the excellent former Coroner drummer Marky Edelmann, and two complete unknowns named Danny Zingg (bass) and Donovan Szypura (sampling and programming), our T.G. Warrior offers us an enigmatic, oblique, unstable, strongly twisted (Anglophones would say "twisted and sick"), morbid album, that convinces only partially, either because of the musically brutal elements hard to assimilate without numerous listens (although this could also be a kind of filter for ears not particularly attuned to the oddities inherent in our Swiss musician's style), or for an abundant use of the industrial component, specifically dub and trip hop-influenced.

Don't rush to easy negative judgments: the foundation of the tracks is clearly metal, and of notable power at that, a magmatic metal largely based on slow and obsessive rhythms, foreshadowing the sounds that became predominant in "Monotheist," although all is crafted through a cold and cybernetic use of electronics (including numerous samples and effected vocals), a distorted and dream-like vision filtered through the dub and trip hop component which most prominently expresses itself via loops, dissonant keyboards, and a drum set often overlapped with the human one, somewhat reminiscent (even if slow to the point of absurdity) of Pitchshifter's "www.pitchshifter.com".

In truth, there's nothing to be surprised about since the seed of this virulence was already sown in the seminal "Into the Pandemonium," with the song "One in their Pride," supporting the idea that T.G. Fischer has always looked at the application of electronics to music with great interest.

If the general mood of the album in question is as described above, there emerge on rare occasions some more intimate and airy breaks, finding their pinnacle in the delicate and depressed gothic song "Slander", still allowing the listener to ease their nerves in anticipation of the subsequent sonic compression.

Sonic compression that from the opener "Dweller" accompanies the listener through approximately 46 minutes of alienation that these artists manage to offer us; after all, the introduction pronounced by the first phrase of the opener itself is << "What's this drug that screws your mind?">>, so what do you expect?

The only real negative note I'd dedicate to "Human", a poor attempt to plagiarize the rhythmic section of "Beautiful People" by Reverend Manson, back when the aforementioned reverend still had something interesting to say to the world.

Appendix of color: there is a fairly warped and lysergic version of the classic "Messiah", which certainly captures the revolutionary intentions that surely took hold in the mind (pardon the anatomical pun) of our Tomas when the Apollyon Sun project reached its zenith.

In conclusion, "Sub" is an interesting albeit not perfectly centered album, still possessing the merit of artistically reviving a legend, enough to consider the album under review as a bridge, an extra-dimensional conduit, between the glorious past and the still unexplored future of Celtic Frost.