Your first reaction to the phrase “Heavy metal cello” might be to laugh; it sounds as if it would just be a stunt. Apocalyptica is four Finnish cellists, and I wonder if maybe their rock experimentation started out as something of a stunt, as their first album was a set of Metallica covers. But what they’ve done is much more than that; it’s a potent and versatile sound, unlike anything else I know. A friend of mine put me on to the group a month or two ago and I got this self-titled album from eMusic. I can’t say it’s a great album overall, but I keep coming back to it because what I like in it I like very much.
Start with the basic sound. If the first thing you heard was one of their hard rock uptempo songs like the first track here, “Life Burns!,” and you weren’t listening closely, you might think you were just hearing heavy electric guitars playing power chords. But there’s something different about this sound, sort of a rich deep growl, that’s very powerful. And most of the tracks combine this with the warm singing natural tone of the cello, to sometimes very beautiful effect.
I like at least half the tracks here a great deal, especially the melancholy ballads like “Bittersweet” and “Farewell.” What’s missing is a fully-developed artistic identity. This is almost all instrumental music, and pop music is a partly verbal art: it needs words and voices. The vocals here are very ordinary, sort of a generic and lackluster hard rock style; I like “Bittersweet” in spite of the vocals, not because of them. With a really gifted songwriter and singer, this group could do something really important.
Here’s an instrumental version of “Bittersweet” that really showcases their sound. It’s 5:25 long and doesn’t get heavy until about 3:50. Although you don’t hear it on this track, they’re capable of some impressive virtuoso “shredding” as practiced by guitar players like Joe Satriani.
And here is the eMusic page where you can hear samples from the album.
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