Volcanic Reality by Apparitions

Experimental drone metal group Apparitions created their 2022 debut, Eyes Like Predatory Wealth by unorthodox means, designing and following outlines for general concepts and duration, then recording each of their parts solo, without the benefit of hearing the others. In this way, each piece on that record was a collage of drums, guitar, and modular synth. This was an avowed exploration of Lutosławski’s compositional technique of limited indeterminacy. The results were sonically colossal and beautiful.

On 2025’s follow-up, Volcanic Reality, the band may have taken a more direct approach –– performing and recording all together at the same time in one studio –– but they have not cast off their penchant for the conceptually meticulous, nor the growling drones, howling feedback, maximal drums, and sirenic modular synth formations. While Eyes Like Predatory Wealth was incontrovertibly massive, Volcanic Reality is somehow more crushing. Fans of SUMAC and SUNN O))) will undoubtedly find this music compelling.

There is something profoundly close, and almost claustrophobic about Volcanic Reality, which somehow simulates a devastating encounter. “This is an album concerned with excess,” the trio says. Referencing both Georges Bataille and Black Sabbath, the album title is an apt signal of the record’s concerns and aesthetic universe. As Apparitions explains -– or perhaps, understands it –– “We, as human beings, are unified in volatile (often violent) cosmic flows, not only with our Sun, but also our very own planet, in our shared need to squander, lose ourselves, without gain. To make music or art, in our case, is not metaphor or tied to any idealism, but sacred phenomena within the general economies of matter and energy in the universe.”

The trio recorded Volcanic Reality at Machines With Magnets in one day and largely on first takes, with engineer Seth Manchester who, according to Apparitions, “piled on gain throughout various stages of the signal path to simulate the perceived biological distortion of the human ear when listening to amplified guitars live.” The sense of physicality is masterful. As with all things Apparitions, the rather swift nature of the recording process was deliberate, part and parcel of an attempt to blur the distinction between composition and improvisation, both of which are significantly present on Volcanic Reality.

Writing for, somewhat improbably, All About Jazz, Mark Corroto called Apparitions’ debut “the quietest loud music out there,” finding an incredibly detailed universe in the nuances of the trio’s sonic conversation. This quality persists on Volcanic Reality. It is a study in the relationship between consonance and dissonance, between composition and improvisation, between peace and unrest, between extreme horror and divine ecstasy. On Volcanic Reality, Apparitions, at least in part, proceeds from and reflects on these words from Bataille: “You will not cease before you recognize yourself as a man who carries within him a hope great enough to demand all sacrifices. This memento will remind you that from this moment you can no longer expect any peace from yourself."

DIVINE ECSTASY//
EXTREME HORROR

NEW YORK//
CHICAGO//
HOUSTON

ensembleapparitions.com