Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Appearance Of Nothing
Label: Escape Music
Released: 2008
Runtime: 46.33
Rating: 2/5
Appearance of Nothing are Swiss, risen from the ruins of No Thanx. The quintet serves up music that falls into progressive metal heavily mixed into a power metal template. The band is three years old, and what I’m holding in my hands is their first real studio album. You can feel plenty of holes and gaps all over it, at least as far as the songwriting goes.
These guys are obviously very well-read and educated musically, and playing technique is anything but foreign to them. They’re heavily obsessed with elements of classical music. That shows most clearly in the prominent keyboard arrangements, which often act as a symphonic orchestra. The lead guitarist is a wild “shredder” who’s hard to stop. He rips out punchy riffs, he’s fast as the devil himself, and those guitar phrases are sharp and emphasized in the production. As a soloist, he comes entirely from classical music. In a combination of keyboards and guitar like this, where you often run into crossfire solos too, the association with Dance Royal Hunt isn’t so far-fetched. Especially once you realize the guys like to step on the gas now and then in power metal fashion, when the double bass drum pedal thunders out from under the guitar riff at top speed, which feels like a very worn-out template these days.
Appearance Of Nothing’s weakest point is the vocals. They get away with it best in the calmer parts, when the singer goes for gentle, clean melodic singing that sounds tragic and interesting enough, but when he resorts to force and rasp, I’d send him straight off to sing with power metal lumberjacks like Iron Savior. In the soft symphonic collages and especially in the ultra-melodic guitar soloing, such a clumsy vocal feels annoying and forced. In the choruses, the guys don’t make use of the empty space, which they should have filled more decisively with multi-part vocal harmonies.
The second problem the guys face is that, in their creative fervor, they want to offer the listener as much as possible in every song. What does that mean? The songs are already varied in terms of motifs and complexly built in a prog metal way, but those motifs aren’t fluidly joined together. Often a listenable motif gets going, only to be cut off by some less compatible keyboard transition, or the guys wreck the dynamics with rhythm breaks or heavy rhythmic turns (transitions). Sometimes the guys try too hard to show off all their school knowledge. And this album struggles with that problem from the first minute to the last. You could also call it initial naivety.
Going forward, they’ll need to pay more attention to the basic axiom “less is more,” and then maybe something more interesting will come out of Appearance Of Nothing’s hands. A change of singer would also be very welcome, maybe even bringing in a female vocalist, since the music, in its keyboard arrangements, creates a general feeling of mourning that a woman’s maidenly innocent voice could effectively carry into the realms of gothic atmosphere.
Lineup
Patrick Gerber – vocals, guitar
Peter Berger – guitar
Marc Petralito – keyboards, piano
Omar Cuna – bass guitar, backing vocals
Yves Lüthi – drums
Production
Markus Teske
Track list
1. Man In The Mirror
2. The Gambler
3. Drifting Away
4. Wasted Time
5. Wrapped In Silence
6. Lies Of A Memory
7. The Science Of Light
I Out Of The Dark
II Into The Light
III Reprise
8. The Last Song…
