I have been eagerly awaiting a full-length debut from Australia’s Complexant since I heard the song “Your Sacrifice” from 2024; to this day, it still has some of the most gorgeous keyboards I’ve heard in a deathcore song, right up there with Winters Gate‘s “Preordained”. (The band’s debut 2023 EP, Rite of Passage, also has some well-used orchestration).
So when I started listening to Apex, and got further and further into the album, and there were no keyboards or orchestration, I was a little disappointed, as it appears the band, going against the grain, has removed the ‘blackened/symphonic’ element, and gone for a straight-up technical death metal/ deathcore sound. And that’s Ok, so once I got over myself and listened to the album for what it is, what Complexant has delivered is a solid effort of that aforementioned sound.
There’s been quite a bit of lineup shuffling for the band since their inception in 2017. And that might be part of the shift, notably, new vocalist Dan Greigsy replaces Brendan Clark. He’s a serviceable growler, but his semi-clean vocals don’t quite work (“i.e “No Angels Weep”, “Heretical Supremacy”), and some true singing makes the band a little more commercial than their early work.
So if you are familiar with when Whitechapel or Fit For an Autopsy went more experimental/commercial, you’ll have some idea of the still sometimes bludgeoning, technical but cleaner take on deathcore.
The mix/master from Crytopsy’s Christian Donaldson is, as you expect, tight, clean, and heavy. And the riffs from Shannon Zivkovic and Gavin Bradley are razor-sharp and tight when they go full force, like “Afterlife”, the more blackened “Swing Myself to Sleep” and “Cyclops”, a couple of minutes into “Critical Mass” and “Eye For An Eye”.
But as I mentioned, there’s a slightly more commercial, metalcore element here mixing with some more blistering stuff, and along with some of the clean vocals, some of which kind of bring killer songs to a halt (“Afterlife”), the album ends up being a little bit of a letdown for me personally.
I hate to be ‘that guy’, but it’s clear my bias based on a three-year-old EP and a single song the band put out 2 years ago is coming through here, despite my best efforts. The removal of the keyboards might be a boon to some, as that style is pretty saturated, so the band’s choice to remove them is to be praised, and fans of no-synths metalcore/deathcore should still enjoy this.
But at the same time, a track like the massive mid-paced closer “No Hope for Sanctuary” screams for some big orchestral bombast, and when they teased something as magnificent as “Your Sacrifice”, Apex is a bit of a let-down, as the band doesn’t stand out at all from the masses now.
