Apes – Lightless (Review)

Apes are a dark hardcore band from Canada and this is their debut album.

I love it when you find a band that don’t limit themselves to what they play, exploring multiple genres and bringing everything together with a love of extremity and savage delivery.

Across these brutal 20 minutes you’ll find hardcore, crust, grindcore, black metal, sludge, and even some elements of filthy doom. Lightless is a great listen, and not a single second of its playing time is wasted.

The songs are well-recorded and strike just the right balance between clarity and ugliness. I love the brief moments of tense ambience that appear here and there before the next viscous assault begins. This also speaks to the quality of the dynamics and pacing of the release in general, with a surprising amount of variety and diversity being displayed by the band.

Not content with simply playing the type of heavy music that can crush an ox at 100 paces, the band also inject more than enough moments of feeling and emotive darkness into the music when they feel the need to. It’s all very impressive and extremely enjoyable.

Apes have obviously honed their delivery in the live arena before committing these slices of mayhem to tape, and I can easily imagine them airing these short apocalyptic soundscapes in front of hordes of broken, bruised disciples.

This stalks very much the same killing grounds of bands such as Nails, Trap Them, Unyielding Love, Sunlight’s Bane, Full of Hell, Ion Dissonance, Thieves, etc., and fans of those impressive groups should be equally impressed with what Apes have to offer.

Yes, I love releases like this, and I hope you will too. Check them out, and get ready for the dark.