Zwielicht - The Aphotic Embrace

Angry Metal Guy 40

Occasionally, we all gotta go back to our roots. Expanding one’s sonic palette is all fine and good, but when you’ve had a beast of a day, sometimes you just want to close your eyes and lose yourself in the familiar. 2024 has been incredibly hard work so far, which is why the AMG overlords suggested I go back to what Doomy does best: reviewing underground black metal. Zwielicht in the promo sump immediately jumped out. Experienced musicians (the band is nearly 20 years old)? Check. Evil and fast black metal? Check. Unencumbered by petty labels and their weird expectations? Check. The Aphotic Embrace is only the band’s second full-length LP, but already I was excited by these mysterious Germans. Was that excitement justified?

When it comes to its line-up, Zwielicht has—weirdly—a lot in common with the Fast and the Furious franchise, notably the numerous changes and additions to the line-up since its inception. There are the staples who have been there from the beginning (founding member LCF’s Saw is like Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto), there are new characters (guitarists N. and M., who joined in 2017 and 2021, are the Hobbs and Shaw of Zwielicht) and there are the people who you thought were dead and gone, but are now back (Demozid and Demogeron on bass and drums left in 2015, but both returned in 2017 and 2021, much like Letty and Han in F&F). Unlike that franchise, however, there is no “family” motif that links all of this together. As a result, these bewildering shifts result in music that has all the components of interesting black metal, but without a unifying vision to guide it.

The Aphotic Embrace by Zwielicht

Like so many albums, especially self-released ones, the songs on The Aphotic Embrace are generally too long and bloated. There are only 5 songs proper, and most of them are between 8 and 11 minutes long. This is disappointing because there are some really great ideas, such as the opening of the awesomely-titled, “The Stench of Rotting Deities.” It is full of rage and energy: a thundering riff complementing disciplined drumming and energetic guitar work. It then transitions into a slower, gentler portion before returning to its original riff. This is all fine, but it’s 11 minutes long and could easily have been condensed to 5. This dilutes the good stuff. The trend repeats itself on “Fallen Abbey,” which loves its central riff so much it repeats it for 5 minutes before any kind of shift. This pattern of dragging everything outweighs promising tracks, and the album as a whole, down.

One of our good friend Ferox’s favorite musings is that “endings are hard.” If you ever needed proof of this, The Aphotic Embrace would be Exhibit A. Both the songs and the album itself begin strongly and excitingly, only to putter out by the close. The tracks too frequently end by looping back on themselves, which is a neat trick until you realize that they almost all do it, by which point it becomes dull. The album suffers a similar fate. Both closers (“The Aphotic Embrace” and “Twilight Temple”) offer little in terms of material that is new or exciting, and try to make up for this deficit with sheer aggression. But this strategy can’t hide the fact that they appear to padding time until the end.

It feels like I’ve been harsh on Zwielicht and The Aphotic Embrace, and that’s because I find it a frustrating listen. There are good ideas here, but they get buried in the bloat. There is genuine aggression, but it is muted by predictable songwriting. There is solid musicianship, but a lack of a true, unifying identity. Perhaps this is the inevitable outcome of so much change and line-up shifting. Like the Fast and Furious franchise, Zwielicht seem to have lost their identity with all the shuffling and additions. There is blame to go round, but that isn’t helpful. Regardless, The Aphotic Embrace is a bit of a bloated mess. Hopefully, the band can regroup and refocus, but until then, there is little here to trouble your playlist.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-released
Website: zwielicht.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/zwielichtbm/
Released Worldwide: February 9th, 2024

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