Review of Neron - Apocrypha in situ
Neron doesn't try to hide where his black metal comes from. Apocrypha in situ belongs firmly to the 1990s school: raw guitars, cold and ominous atmosphere, melodic passages and enough epic (sometimes) feeling in places to keep the six songs from becoming one continuous blast of darkness. It has that old black-metal roughness without going completely primitive, and the slower sections are often more effective than simply pushing the tempo harder.
“Millennium of Disgrace” is the track I keep coming back to. The mid-tempo pace gives the guitars more emotional weight, and the song has a melancholic quality that works particularly well within the otherwise hostile mood of the album. It is still unmistakably black metal, but there's more going on emotionally than just anger and contempt.
Neron is a one-man project based in Norway, although its creator originally comes from Croatia. He writes, performs, records and produces everything himself. The project actually began much earlier, but it took years before the music became a finished album.
That history gives the project some context, but the music isn't built around the story. The main subject is humanity, and Neron isn't exactly generous in his assessment of it. The lyrics deal with disappointment in people, frustration with existence and the unpleasant realisation that he can't stand outside the problems he sees because he is part of humanity himself.
That last point is worth noting. Neron's misanthropy isn't aimed exclusively at everybody else. He openly includes himself in the criticism, which makes the whole thing less like a black-metal lecture and more like somebody trying to make sense of his own disgust.
The name comes from Nero, specifically the famous image of the Roman emperor playing his lyre while Rome burned. Neron knows perfectly well that the story is historically questionable. That's not really important here. He liked the image and what it suggested: remaining there with your instrument while the world around you falls apart.
The title is tied to the same idea. Neron sees things in modern life that he thinks people would rather leave alone, including the fact that much of what surrounds us is built by people in the first place. His lyrics don't exactly offer a sunny alternative.
Nor does he insist that the listener should read them in one particular way. He has talked about the ideas behind the songs, but he's quite happy to let somebody else take them somewhere different. That's how it should be with lyrics this personal.
The album is a completely solo job. Six songs written and played by one musician, with the recording and production done by the same person. Neron isn't chasing technical perfection either. He'd rather keep a part that feels right than change it just because somebody might consider it more correct from a technical point of view.
You can hear the roughness in the finished record. The guitars have enough dirt to keep things properly old-school, but the melodies still come through. That's important here because the record isn't at full speed all the time. The riffs have more space and the mood becomes more emotional. There's a mournful quality to the guitar work that I find more memorable than the album's harsher passages.
And this is where Neron has my attention. The 1990s black-metal influence isn't subtle, but I don't have a problem with that when the songs have something to say for themselves. The faster material gives you the expected rawness; the slower material gives the album a bit more personality.
I'd rather see Neron develop that side than simply turn up the aggression next time. The basic sound can stay exactly where it is. More melodic writing, more mid-tempo passages, perhaps a little more of those epic touches that appear here and there.
The album was released independently in May. Neron never planned to send this debut around to labels. He wanted to make the record, learn how to handle the release himself and finally get the project moving after all those years.
And that's what Apocrypha in situ is: a long-delayed black-metal project finally becoming an actual album. Six songs, one musician, no label, no attempt to make the music easier to swallow.
The weakness is familiar territory. There is very little here that couldn't have appeared on a black-metal record thirty years ago. If originality is your main requirement, this will be a problem.
For a debut that spent so many years waiting to happen, Apocrypha in situ is a solid beginning. It sounds old, deliberately so, but Neron's more emotional material gives the project somewhere to go beyond simply repeating the 1990s formula.