APSARA / ALTAIS

I was really excited when I heard this is going to be released since we don't get many Zehul albums coming out, I always loved Altais's EP and was sorry it was only about 12 minutes of music, but not only the music is what drew me to this, it's the historic value of it. So apparently Apsara when formed in 1981 was the early incarnation of Altais and Shub Niggurath. Ann Stewart, Franck Fromy and Veronique Verdier went on to form Shub Niggurath in 1983 and the rest continued as Apsara but later changed their name to Altais. So this album contains 5 tracks under Apsara and the EP released under Altais in 1986 which I already had. The first track is the only studio recording of the band, the other 4 tracks are from a live show in 1983 so the sound quality is not that good.

Apsara are a true Zehul band with all its characteristics, closer to bands like Eskaton, Archaia and naturally Shub Niggurath only a bit less noisier. Like Shub Niggurath and Univers Zero's concept Apsara's music is also very frightening and disturbing, creating heavy atmosphere with a lot of tension, containing freak outbursts of sheer madness. what you'll notice right away is the upfront fat and grainy deep throbbing bass sounds of Philippe Goudier and Jean-Marie Sadot, yes they had two bass players! the first is lower and deeper and the second is higher usually played with distortion, it's a real delight listening to those two interplay. Ann Stewart is resposible for the vocal chants and she is doing a great job, there's also a saxophone, keys and guitar involved. Enfer Mais is the only studio track and is the best composition here, I guess it's also the sound quality which makes it superior to the other tracks, guitar, keys and sax are more evident and as a result the music sounds richer. The song include a few parts, all with a repetitive kind of mantra and a natural flow, the music is dark and haunting with a propulsive rhythm, accompanied by sax and guitars, where the double bass attack is the main attraction. The arrangements are wonderful as the tension builds a few times, It gets more intense along the way with saxophones and guitar, fantastic piece. The next 4 live tracks are a bit inferior to the opener but are still definitely good, I think they would have been more effective if cut shorter a little bit. The second track Apsaras is more repetitive leaning on bass and vocals accompanied by quirky guitar playing. En D'Autres Lieux features an eerie violin, sounds like something out of Univers Zero's Hersie. Love those bass workouts half way through including some vocal grouling!! there's also some wild guitar playing later but it's a little bit hard to pick up on this because of the recording quality. The shorter 6 minutes O Rages is quite scary with a heavy atmosphere and frightening sounds by bass, guitar, violin and crazy screaming! it picks up later with a chaotic playing by everybody. Ici Et Maintenant is totally psychotic, bordering madness. As what appears to be another slow piece at first suddenly picks up aggressively with a pounding rhythm the closing part is really cool with children laughing and also screaming on top of a steady eerie beat, very nice.

This is a little hard to digest at first and even harder because of the sound quality, you have to really focus and give it your special attention to really understand what is going on. The next three tracks are the Altais EP I won't go over this again (check out reviews on the EP's page) I'll just say it's really good and along with this Apsara material makes it a very worthwhile addition to your collection. I'm sure if the sound was better it would have revealed as a better album too, 3 stars because it is what it is.