Fugitive Wizard - Apocrypha (2024)
I decided to check this out after a recent revisit to Grimdor's "The Shadow of the Past." My relatively recent forray into black metal helped me appreciate sections of the album that were more synth focused, and my recent listening has helped me appreciate what "dungeon synth" artists are trying to do more. Enter Fugitive Wizard's 2024 album "Apocrypha." A rearrangement of the artist's 4 years of EP work, this marks the artist's 2nd full length album, but is a great jumping off point as a collection of their early demo material. Right from the start we get a peak at what will make this album special. The delayed attack, foggy, faux-horn tone synth plays in what is an admittedly standard black metal track. The synth will rejoin the melody later, adding a nice final layer to the track, a missing puzzle piece. This technique will be used again and again to even better effect throughout the album. Track 2, "Armored Wolf" gets an absolute ear worm of a synth intro; eerie, wandering and lost. Tremelo picked guitar and blast beats soon follow where the synthesizer cuts out, with riffs sounding like they're about to spiral out of control near the end of phrases. When the synth picks back up to provide a countermelody that serves as a sort of chorus to the track, its like the thesis of this musical project snaps into focus, especially when the blast beat is traded for a driving punk beat that makes the whole chorus two steppable as hell.
The drumming on the album is tight and contained, orchestrated to highlight the insturments surrounding it. The flashiest it gets may be some impressive hi-hat work if you know what you're listening for. The guitars are composed similarly, with plenty of solos throughout the album, but always working as interesting bridges between parts of a piece, and never overstaying their welcome with any pretension of "shredding." Vocals are percussive and atmospheric at different times, highlighting a variety or harsh vocal styles I've appreciated in the past, similar to Viglijós.
This manages to be one of the most approachable black metal albums I've listened to and is quickly becoming my go to album to show my friends who are just getting into/aren't currently into the genre, and that means something to me. It does this without compromising the grainy lowfi production, harsh shrieked vocals or cacophonus walls of sound, and it does by being such a masterclass on what the synthesizer can add to the genre. There are no gimmicks on this albums, just tight composition from musicians who seem to appreciate this genre in ways I always have but couldn't articulate before experiencing their work.
