APEP (Germany)
T: Why did you decide to do brutal technical death metal not just do classic death?
Oliver: After our previous band CARNAGE split
up, Merlin, Christopher and me, we founded APEP. The huge change in style
wasn’t really a conscious decision. I wanted to create a technical approach on
oldschool oriented and riff based death metal with the new band and mix it up
with Egypt-based and occult text elements and decent sound effects. My style of
playing tends to be a more confused one with a lot of riff progression. After
completing the songs for our demo, it was clear that we wanted to deepen that
sound and the overall concept and atmosphere. It took a while to evolve the
guitar harmonies that suit this kind of tech death with oriental scales.
Merlin: I wouldn't consider it as a “decision” either that we sound, how we
sound. It was probably a natural progress instead. They way Olli developed his
guitar technique back then, pushed the whole band ahead and we suddenly played
songs, we could have never imagined before.
Christopher: We are huge NILE fans and that’s surely one reason why we 're
doing this “old-school” technical death style. But of course, we also intended
not to copy any bands, but to let influences from various death metal bands
that we like flow in.
T: What is the meaning of the band and does it have to do with the lyrics of each song?
Oliver: Apophis or Apep is a deity of the
ancient Egyptians. There is no cult around him that is known from other
deities. He occupies a special position in the pantheon of the gods for he is
neither the son nor the father of anyone. Instead, it stands rather as the
embodiment of dissolution, darkness and chaos and at the same time is the great
adversary of Maat (the ancient Egyptian equivalent of balance and order). It is
usually depicted as a supernaturally large snake. The ancient Egyptians assumed
that Apophis existed in the sea of prehistoric chaos before creation. His only
desire is to destroy creation by devouring the sun god Re on his nightly
journey through the underworld. He wants to lead the world back to the primal
chaos before creation. Preventing this is the fate of Re and his crew, who
travel across the primeval sea with a barge in the underworld. They often come
across Apophis who try to destroy them. This is the main theme of the album and
is referred to in the songs "Banishing of Chaos" and "Spell for
Passing the Sandbank of Apophis". The cover artwork also shows such a
scene from the underworld.
T: What do you think about the new death metal scene in Germany and what do you
expect from it?
Christopher: Germany has a strong metal scene
witht great bands, such as SULPHUR AEON; SIJJIN; PURGATORY only to name a few.
My wish, not expectation, would be to hit the stage with them one day.
Merlin: There are lots of awesome DM bands in Germany, although I need to
admit, I'm feeling a bit fed up with bands, who are copying the Sweden-style
DM, because they mostly fail to create the magic, like the old heroes once did
it. Lately, I've been really obsessed with ARCHAIC THORN'S “Eradication” and
OMEGAVORTEX' “Black Abomination Spawn”. Great stuff, both debut LPs!
T: How they took the pandemic in all of 2020 did or did not affect the band and
how they think it will influence the band by 2021.
Christopher: We didn’t see that coming when we released “The Invocation of the
deathless One” at the end of January 2020. We received a lot of good feedback
from zines and fans all over the globe, what we didn’t expect. Hopefully this
fucked up situation will end soon, so we can play live again.
Oliver: The pandemic definitely hits us hard. We managed to play only one show
to promote our album. The other concertes were cancelled. There was also a
festival that we were supposed to play at, which was postponed two times to may
2021. I guess we will not play there this year either. Without concerts it is
very hard to reach people as there are always persons in the crowd that have
not heard about a band before. I personally have discovered some good bands
this way. ENGULFED from Turkey are a good example. I saw them at Party San Open
Air one day. Never heard about them before, but I really enjoyed the show and
became a fan. You don’t have this effect if you just upload your album
somewhere.
Merlin: Exactly, we're not only people, who are writing music in the rehearsal
room, but we're also huge metal fans, who love to go out, and also in this
regard the current situation sucks. I'm really missing it to discover new bands
and to get drunk with friends at live occasions. Let's hope, this will be
possible again in 2022, but I have a bad feeling somehow.
Merlin: It would obviously be wrong to claim, I know a major part of the scene there, but in general I'm always keeping my eyes and ears open for new band discoveries worldwide. The scene in Latin America is incredibly vivid, so it's impossible to know all the bands from there, but I'm familiar with hordes like Diabolic Force, Apokalyptic Raids, Communion or Witchtrap to name a few. And of course, there's always time for worshipping the old heroes like Sepultura in their prime, Sarcofago or Krisiun! By the way, the new Inquisition LP is amazing and is heavily rotating here. Could be even their best, if you ask me! But sometimes it's really a pity that the scene from there gets a bit ignored in comparison to the European and North American scene... Touring South America would be great of course, but I think we don't really have the status to go abroad at the moment and also there's still the pandemic.
Christopher: I am not that deeply trusted with the latin metal scene to be honest, but of course we would like to play there, because we learned that even there, there are people, who seem to appreciate our music.
Oliver: I’d really like to play in Latin America. If we got the chance to tour there someday, we'd surely go for it. As for the other question, I’m not really deep into the Latin American scene but it used to evolve some legendary bands. A few years ago I discovered DYING BREED from Brazil for example.
T: Where did the inspiration for the band come from to play extreme technical metal?
Oliver: As for the technical part of the music NILE, HATE ETERNAL and LOST SOUL were always great inspirations in terms of guitar playing and sound. But we like to mix it up with other elements from the extreme metal genre. Great influences are MORBID ANGEL, MELECHESH and NERVECELL to name just a few.
Christopher: As I said before, I'm a big NILE Fan. This band will always be a huge inspiration for me. I'm a huge fan of the US DM scene in general.
T: How do you think the band influences your current national scene?
Oliver: I don’t know if we somehow influence the German death metal scene. At
least we’re adressing a couple of fans who like our work and we're getting good
and motivating responses from our fans. If the pandemic someday may be over,
we’ll look forward to playing concerts and hopefully enlarge the amount of
people listening to APEP.
Merlin: I think, the time of influencing other artists is over, especially when
you're a new band. And honestly this will also never be our aim. We simply
create music that we like and if somebody will ever feel inspired by us, it
would be a great honour, but that's never what we intend. But when we're
talking about the German scene, there are or were still “newer” DM bands, like
NECROS CHRISTOS or SULPHUR AEON, who achieved a unique sound and had an impact
on all of us, so it's still possible to set a brand obviously.
T: Have you agreed with the reinvention of the current metal scene, for example
online events concerts among others?
Christopher: Not at all. This music belongs to a stage in front of a crowd… we
sadly have played only one concert last year, but it was a good club gig,
within the first accords of the first song I was directly part of the pit. No
online concert can give you that feeling.
Oliver: I also do not like this “reinvention”. It’s not the same to watch a
concert on TV or somewhere on the internet than in real life. No matter if it
is a live stream or not. You can’t interact with the crowd as you may do this
in a live situation. You can’t go off the stage. You can’t toast with fans
after the concert. It doesn’t feel right for me. Don’t get me wrong, I also
like to watch concerts on YT or whatever but that’s not the whole deal. I know
a band that did a live stream and they are ok with it. As for us it’s not an
option to do this kinds of concert on a regular basis and if there will be
absolutely no live concerts anymore, I would have no motivation to make music
anymore. I really want to interact with people in real life, especially when it
comes to concerts. Everything else sounds like a weird and dystrophic science
fiction movie.
Merlin: Nothing to add... We also thought about recording a rehearsal session
with cams and studio mic'ing, maybe even with some new material, like BLOOD
INCANTATION did recently for example, but this will never replace real live
gigs. The web provides great possibilities, but live gigs will always be
essential. As I said, we're mainly fans ourselves, not just musicians.
T: What opinion do you have about the
sites that we dedicate ourselves to give a boost to the world underground metal
being that it is the one that needs the most diffusion in our opinion?
Merlin: People, who dedicate themselves to the
music are THE scene and we're more that grateful, whenever people like you are
caring about our music!
Christopher: Death Metal, extreme metal in general, needs a strong underground,
this fact has been there in the beginning of the scene until today. I'm glad
that this “network” is still growing and therefore we also have a lot of great
new bands in the scene. I think this is an effect of the underground, which you
don't really have in other scenes nowadays.
Oliver: I really appreciate your work for you have an unbiased view on the
bands and their work. Also you follow and interview the real underground bands
that you have not heard about in the big zines such as Metal Hammer. The small
underground zines are elementary for underground metal scene.
https://www.facebook.com/ApepBand/
https://apep.bandcamp.com/music
