King Apathy

Post-rock is such a beautiful genre, when it isn't boring. I remember when I discovered Explosions in the Sky in high school, and The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. It was smooth, ethereal music--a hint that, later in life, I would fall in love with the ambient genre.

King Apathy is not post-rock. It's black metal. But it has hints of what make post-rock great, that elevate it to the next tier of quality. The first half of "Vanishing Youth," the most introspective track, could be taken from an Explosions in the Sky album. (A good one.) The second half of "Ghosts" has a beautiful, expressive guitar, which is more memorable than the voice. Almost every track has an interlude with a post-rock flavor.

What do all these post-rock interludes contribute? Balance. The vocals on this album are harsh. They aren't my favorite, and I've heard that other people don't like them much either. They're a good match for the mournful, blunt lyrics: "We breath with cancer in our lungs / We'll die with plastic in our mouths." But an hour of that kind of in-your-face despair would be exhausting.

The beautiful guitars, and the deliberate pacing, suggest that this album was formed in a place of balance. The lyrics and the vocalist might sound distressed and exhausted and, yes, even a little ugly. But the ugliness is made powerful precisely because of the contrast that it makes with the centered guitars and drums.

King Apathy is also a remarkably consistent album. All the tracks are winners. The production quality is superb. It's a fairly easy choice, honestly, for top honors, even if the vocals aren't my favorite.