Sculptured

Apollo Ends (The End)
by Martin Popoff

Record two for Washington state’s Sculptured continues with the band’s potent blend of aged, very English medieval metal and doomy American death. It’s a sound right up there with the dark progressive depressives currently creating new impressive waves in the UK and in Sweden, along with that shaggy anomaly, Deceased, and a killer Canadian indie act you ain’t never heard of called Into Eternity. Lyrically, the band is up to their thick post-Maiden sod rock, the sum total reading like a dreamy sequence about sun-risen wakefulness and/or insomnia, gently prodded or mercilessly eroded by rain, dew and snow. The occasional use of horns is a bit of a forced touch, almost a bit too exotic and jarring on a record that’s leaden metal heaven, methodical, always interesting and musical, offering a perfect and calculated blend of death and normal vocals, both of which work over such ancient, stone-crumbled riffery. It might take one more record to integrate these sounds productively (and I do hope they keep trying), but for now, Sculptured are an intellectually and emotionally intense purveyor of metal progression that have crafted a headphone album that lays the greased rails for a trip deep inside your soul. Just watch for floods, avalanches and mudslides.
(556 S. Fair Oaks Ave. #101-111 Pasadena, CA 91105)