Review by Krys on July 30, 2002.

Advertised as “a unique blend of Thrash, Epic and Symphonic Black Metal” Apotheosis is a one-member band that was born from a fascination of ambient, electronic music and the atmosphere of early ‘90’s black metal. Sauron’s debut album “Farthest From the Sun” is a collection of just 4 tracks (from which two are reworked promo songs) but clocking in at almost 51 minutes.

Opener ‘Victory’ is a 6-minute-plus computer orchestrated tune based on simple, not to say primitive, samples running in loops. Amazingly it creates quite a pleasant atmosphere before ‘The Maimed God’ that strikes with blast beats and typical blackish screams. ‘Raise the Dragon Banner’ influenced by the old thrash school incorporates piano loops, ‘cosmic’ computer effects and a pleasing but elementary guitar lead. The album closes with the epic ‘Kingdom’ which is over sixteen minutes. Like previous efforts, this track combines many music styles and showcases Sauron’s already impressive arrangement talents but lacks anything that could make it stand out in the crowd.

My biggest problem with “Farthest From the Sun” is musicianship. While I can appreciate the effort of trying to complete an album on your own there’s no way under the sun that one man can be efficient in all instruments and represent the same high quality skill level on each one of them. Because of that, the whole album, while full of good ideas, sounds amateurish and shows a deficiency in the skill department on the ‘real’ recorded instruments, not to mention that most of them were done by computer to start with. Apotheosis’ “Farthest From the Sun” is an interesting collection of songs based on computer samples and effects incorporating essential elements of many metal styles, but only with improved instrumental skills the future releases might become something more than one more fish in the sea.

Bottom Line: “Farthest From the Sun” is not an album that requires your full attention to grasp every detail, it’s more like a Sunday movie, after long night of partying when you want to relax and have some fun without forcing your brain cells to unnecessary work. Primitive but enjoyable.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 5
Atmosphere: 7
Production: 7
Originality: 6
Overall: 6

Rating: 6.2 out of 10

Review by Carl on April 16, 2020.

If you scan through my list of reviews you'll see that I primarily deal in death and black metal, grindcore and fast thrash. You know, brutality and bloodshed for all, that kinda thing, so it may surprise some that I also have an interest in the darker and weirder side of electronic music. I'm a huge sucker for dark ambient and the experimental sounds brought to us by labels like Cold Meat Industry or Tesco Organisation to name a few. Music that can be equal parts soothing as well as unsettling and can be as terrifying as it can calm the nerves.

Dark Ages was a side effort by members of Drudkh, a band I do not listen to and that I have no particular interest in either, I'm afraid. The thing that actually drew my attention to this project is the fact that this band establishes the right mood for their concept and sounds by the artwork. Utilizing paintings by great late medieval artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder, they immediately set the stage for the soundscapes to follow. It is the right atmosphere that allows the music to take you back to times long gone by, carried away by the haunting sounds emanating from the speakers.

These soundscapes utilize slowly unfolding swathes of keyboard drones with haunting melodies and soothing sounds popping up, creating a majestic tapestry of unsettling darkness. The band make use of different moods to their songs to establish variation between the individual tracks themselves, allowing for different types of emotions to come through. There's the cascade of soothing bells and laid-back choral keyboard sounds of tracks like 'Leprosy' and 'Avarice', but there's also the unsettling, more threatening ambience of 'Deformity', with its haunting tubular bells and organ sounds, and 'Malice', with its ominous Viking choirs and sparse percussion. All of these moods and atmosphere blend together into majestic soundscapes that are abundant with ambience, in which relaxation and unease can go hand in hand. It's almost cinematic. Too bad it's all over in 42 minutes.

You have to be willing to go along with this type of music, of course. I can easily imagine that there are those who consider this to be the pinnacle of boredom, deriding it as "elevator music", but if you are willing to go along into the world of Dark Ages, you'll find yourself a beautifully crafted piece of work in which dread and ease are combined in exquisitely constructed soundscapes that drip with ambience. If the earliest works of Mortiis, Rob Darken's Lord Wind or releases by a label like Cryo Chamber don't turn you off, this will fit you just fine.

Rating: 8 out of 10