Febrvvm - Apokatastasis

Febrvvm's history is one that is not long-lived, but filled with multiple EPs and one album. The one man band ousted himself to the world in November of 2017 when he released "Secretly Dreaming of Freezing to Death".  time after was spent recording as their next four-track release "Ekpyrosis" came out in December of 2018. A year-and-a-half passed between "Ekpyrosis" and their following EP, "Praemeditatio Malorvm", which released in April of 2020. Aside from releasing music, the project is also heavily involved in the visual side of things as he has released music videos for 'Where It Hurts the Most', 'Do You Remember Things That Never Happened?', and, most recently, 'Apokatastasis'. All of this has led into the release of his debut album "Apokatastasis". 



Febrvvm is a project that likes to flirt with the industrial metal genre tag, but also state that a lot of their most recent releases sound like gothic metal. And I would have to agree with that statement just based on "Apokatastasis". The title track is the first on the album and thus that is where my journey began. What I was given is a track with heavy guitars that almost serve as a noise wall. The percussion is almost hidden underneath the overpowering presence of the guitars, but Febrvvm's deep pitched vocals are able to maintain themselves well enough. Febrvvm's vocals are able to pop a bit more in the following song 'Call of the Void' and the guitars do not takeover as much as previously. There are ample opportunities in the song for the other instruments to get their time in the limelight such as a stretch that begins near the one-minute and twenty-five second mark and lasts for around twenty seconds. 

The first two songs on the album left me with a, "Been there, heard that," kind of feeling. They are not bad tracks but they do sound painfully bland for the genre; if you've heard one gothic rock or metal song before, then you've heard these songs before. Some experimental manners turn up in 'Turn into Ash', whereupon dark ambiance is present. Multiple pauses in the song allow for this to happen such as at the two-minute and fifty-second mark and around the three-minute and forty-five second mark. The upped pace of the song and the start-stop maneuvers kept the song more interesting than the intro songs. 

I feel as if Febrvvm's black and doom metal influences make an appearance on the song 'Made Up Stories of You and I". It begins with a dark ambient infrastructure where lowly guitars are heard in the background before they become jarring and upfront. It was an uncomfortable listening experience to say the very least, but the song opens up into a listenable experience around the one-minute and eleven second mark. I did feel as if the mixing was a bit off on this song; in contrast to previous complaints, the vocals dominate at times burying the musical experience beneath. 

One song on the album that I absolutely detest is 'The Dreaming Dead'. It sounds like an improvised jam session and the vocals have no flow with the beat whatsoever. I was completely turned off by this song and, after my third or fourth listen, I found it to be horrid. I skipped over it completely on returns to the album. On the other hand, the song I most enjoyed on the album was 'Where It Hurts the Most'. Funnily enough, this is the song that has the most in common with industrial and darkwave. A steady and dark, bass driven beat backed lightly by electronic chords took over for the beginning of the song. I was a bit disappointed each time the song was driven into a guitar-driven chorus, but once it ran back to the chill beats from before I was enamored. I wouldn't mind hearing Febrvvm try their hand at a full darkwave / industrial album. 

However, each time I played through this album there was just one phrase that kept coming back to my mind and that was, "Generic." Febrvvm has a good understanding of gothic metal and, from what he showed on 'Where It Hurts the Most', industrial mechanics. But everything that he's currently doing (on this album at least) sounds like it could be thrown into a mass of other gothic related releases without standing out on its own. Febrvvm's vocals are also quite standard for the genre; they're deep but don't often match the flow of the song that's playing. Simply put, he sounds uninspired. 

"Apokatastasis", then, is a tough one to score. Normally albums that I feel apathetic towards would land around a five, which means he isn't bad or good. He's simply in between. But due to the myriad of complaints and lack of praise I have for "Apokatastasis", I had to bump it down a bit. Even though I score the album as such, I do always recommend our readers to listen to the album yourselves and give it a go. Opinions are subjective and you might think differently. "Apokatastasis" is available on all major streaming services, including Bandcamp. So, check it out. 

This review was commissioned through our Ko-fi page.
Feb 20 2021