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REVIEWS AND ARTICLES
REVIEWS
ON APOKALEPSIA
NO CLEAN SINGING - WIL CIFER'S ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2021
“Finland had a strong year when it came to exporting metal. Of all the Finnish death metal I came across this band set themselves apart the most. They are not ones to overtly beat your eardrums into submission, but weave their attack around you in a more progressive fashion while still wallowing in the darkness of your soul.”
NO CLEAN SINGING
“Perhaps an even better comparison – or, at least, the best one I can come up with – would be to think of HHH as the Death Metal equivalent of their more “blackened” countrymen in Oranssi Pazuzu, a band with whom they not only share a love of sludgy grooves and psychotropic sounds, but also an almost pathological aversion to playing by the rules.
It all culminates with the dreamlike and doom-laden strains of “Cataclysm”, which marries infectious Post-Punk melodies and intriguingly off-kilter rhythms to a backbone of intricately woven Prog-Death guitar work, thus ending the record with one final display of dynamic cross-genre pollinisation which practically guarantees that you’re going to be jonesing for another fix of the band’s signature sonic stimulant again very, very soon.”
VERDICT: N/A
METALHEAD.IT
TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN: “With “Apokalepsia” we can’t even talk about modern music, rock or alternative metal. No. These Finns just go out of their way to be stylistically elusive, indescribable, but, take a shot at them, they manage to do it in a damn brilliant, incredibly attractive way!”
VERDICT: 10/10
TEMPELORES
“Slithering forward like heat-exhausted reptiles, Hundred Headless Horsemen took a while to start, but now they’re impossible to stop. Opening themselves to a path of self-discovery and spilling out whatever they find, this band is dark, emotional, inquisitive, and clandestine. They are truly unique and playing a completely different game than the rest of the artists in adjacent scenes. Every track they write has a feeling of deep importance and it is frustrating that the knowledge kept within can’t be understood. Apokalepsia is a masterwork and worthy of multiple re-listens to peel back the layers and find some clarity. One can only hope that Hundred Headless Horsemen won’t take another five years for their next surely incredible release.”
VERDICT: N/A
UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES YOU
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH: “Very good sensations before a very experimental Death that plays with the oppressiveness of Sludge and the event horizon that is Doom. Perhaps I have missed something from Drone, but in general, it has seemed like an awful lot of album, that yes, you have to chew a lot and taste it because it is not an easy album if you are not used to this type of music. But what is the style of music? They say it’s psychedelic death, but to me it sounds like Shoegaze, post-metal, progressive … it doesn’t matter, the question is to label everything. The wonderful thing is that it sounds like nothing and it sounds like everything, in short, they sound like Hundred Headless Horsemen and there is no more.”
VERDICT: 10/10
ABYSMAL HYMNS
“Does it push the limits as far as what we might define death metal as ? Yes but isn’t that the point? I will give this album a 9.5, not what I was expecting and way more prog than I bargained for, but really well done and look forward to hearing what the future holds for this band.”
VERDICT: 9.5/10
METALFAN.NL
TRANSLATED FROM DUTCH: “Hundred Headless Horsemen impresses with this debut album that will appeal to fans of experimental and daring extreme music. Apokalepsia comes into its own best when listened to in its entirety. The gentlemen display a fine ear for song building and tension arcs.”
VERDICT: 83/100
METAL.DE
TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN: “The Finns manage the combination of metal, neo-psychedelic and shoegaze effortlessly. Unfortunately, the tracks exaggerate each time with the length at the end. An obvious reason for the long execution does not always appear here. Vocally, too, HUNDRED HEADLESS HORSEMEN do not offer a flawless performance. But otherwise “Apokalepsia” doesn’t let up and surpasses itself with an original sound and a gripping atmosphere. A really strong debut from a strong group.”
VERDICT: 7/10
CAVE DWELLER MUSIC
“Overall, this was a fascinating listen and one that stood out as being truly unique. I almost let this release slip passed me but I’m extremely glad that I didn’t. This is my first time listening to the band and boy have they made an impression on me. If you like your death metal more on the experimental side of things, then please give this a listen and don’t sleep on it. “
VERDICT: N/A
ROCK N' FORCE
“Unlike most bands of the genre, HUNDRED HEADLESS HORSEMEN’s is almost whispered and blends into the songs with a rare attention to detail (“Breath To Death”, “Echoes”, “Spleen”). Original and very well put together, “Apokalepsia” opens up new avenues.”
VERDICT: N/A
METAL FRIENDS
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH: “In some ways it is nutritious and rewarding to listen to soundscapes away from some stereotypes, definitions, and the fact that somehow, we have to name something beyond that, the bands that explore those compositional and textural parameters. Musicals of unengaged music, where exploration is its main axis; those are the sonic highways of the Hundred Headless Horsemen.”
VERDICT: 7.5/10
SCREAM BLAST REPEAT
“Opener, ‘The Road’, is as haunting and hellish as the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name in the way it builds upon ambient drone sounds and clean guitar passages into an enigmatic Tool hook. The vocals are low in the mix as if the singer is trying to communicate from a portal in the extra-terrestrial world. We get groove, ritualistic percussion and a gallop of dissonant chords, but the vibe is an unmistakable post-metal one like Cult of Luna at their darkest. ‘No Longer Human’ is the same – an auditory hallucination of atonal guitars, post-punk bass and malevolent vocal abrasions. One must acknowledge the creative talent here.
Apokalepsia is a curious work of art and reveals many new facets on repeat listens. The band remain anonymous, yet their music is anything but innocuous.”
VERDICT: 7/10
METAL ARCHIVES
Lovers of faster and more casual metal might find this boring and start to look elsewhere. While this is for sure not the kind of music I could listen to each and all day I highly appreciate the special atmosphere HHH are able to create. Softer and mellow parts are used to create a dense mood by being cleverly weaved into the crawling riff attacks and the overall picture. Dystopian themes and extended dreamy soundscapes are building sophisticated passages and giving the whole music a mystical and hypnotizing touch. The vocals are mainly bellowed in old school fashion, although there are also cleaner sounding passages and some chant like sections. Thanks to a diversified and organic production the sound is also great. So in case you are looking for something a bit different and willing to dive into something a bit out of the ordinary I can only recommend to give “Apokalepsia” a listen.
VERDICT: 86/100
METAL.IT
TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN: Almost as if they were a melting pot between Oranssi Pazuzu (deprived, however, of their Black Metal component) and a certain way of understanding the Metal typical of Tool that gave birth to beautiful things (see especially the latest Soen), the Hundred Headless Horsemen dare, churning out a debut really very good.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
METALLILUOLA.FI
Hundred Headless Horsemen on luonut kolossaalisen eliön, joka ensi tahdeista nielaisee kokonaan, eikä suostu päästämään pois tarjoillen joka kuuntelukerralla uutta kunnes musiikki ja kuuntelija ovat yhtä. Parhaiten ”Apokalepsia” toimii yksin pimeässä kuulokkeiden kautta nautittuna. Suosittelen antautumaan pimeyden edessä – oli lempigenresi mikä tahansa. Et taatusti tule pettymään sillä käsillä olevaa albumia ei vain kuunnella, se koetaan.
VERDICT: 8/10
INTERVIEWS
ON APOKALEPSIA
ABBADON MAGAZINE
“It seemed from the outset that once the Hundred Headless Horsemen had been set into motion by the rotten reindeer skull, we really would not be able to control what would follow and where this vessel would take us. We continue to be in awe of what it is that wants to communicate through us and how we learned to listen to it so carefully. This is of course a skill that we cannot take for granted and will have to nurture or be ready to lose forever. More than anything else this is, for us, a journey of exploration and discovery and we still feel like we have only walked the first couple of steps on our path together.”
METAL DIGEST
“There is a strong sense of purpose that keeps us in motion and we also feel that the entity we make up together is much more than the sum of its parts. This really is the beautiful part of being in a creative collective, knowing not where we might be headed to but being sure that everyone has each other’s backs wherever we might be going. More than anything else this is, for us, a journey of exploration and discovery and we still feel like we have only walked the first couple of steps on our path together.”
ROCK YOUR BRAIN WEBZINE
“We were interested in exploring how a large part of our perception of reality is actually forged by fictional stories or distorted perspectives and how much what we think of as “real” is in fact a concoction of our own brains. With enough power of persuasion, it is possible for a large number of us to fall under collective delusions regarding the nature of the reality surrounding us.
A particularly dangerous example of these delusions is the fact that as we are speeding towards an ecological disaster at a rate which should make us question the very foundation of our societies, it still seems easier for us to imagine the demise of the nature that created us, than a change in the economical system that is a creation of our own imagination.
Even with stakes this high, it seems impossible for us to tackle the persuasive power of the system we have internalised. What kind of counterforce could then shake us out of this illusion and to shift our perception? Did we need a warning to go off inside our own bodies to see what the larger biomass around us was already experiencing? As it happens, when we were working on this project, these questions, or at least some derivatives of them, were suddenly on the forefront of human minds everywhere.
What we are suggesting is that the change in perspectives could be happening already. Whether it is because of a virus or a paralysis caused by a failure to function in a world defined by disaster, the stories told today are not the same ones that have been told for the last couple of centuries. What Apokalepsia ultimately deals with is the imminent shift in the center of our universe, the shift away from anthropocentricity and the numerous pathways that can lead into it.
We prefer not to offer too literal explanations for the particular pieces or the concept around them because we feel that would just limit the imagination of the potential listener. The way we see it, our purpose is just to set the stage and we consider any interpretation of the works by anyone watching, reading or listening to be just as valuable as our own.”
