Apparitia dishes out some fairly typical raw, only semi-tonal black metal. Poorly recorded distorted guitars shifting chords chromatically sit over medium-paced machine-sounding blast beats with regular fills. The vocalist fills the musical "air" with swirling, distorted chaos. But between blasts of stereotypical black metal (which somehow has a bewildering feel that's much more appealing than most of the black metal I've heard), there are odd breaks of clean arpeggios. And the insane drums never get boring. Sometimes, there are even pulsing soft, ambient section. There are regular changes of tempo and dynamic. The whole thing is a complete mess. I love it.Gog is some incarnation of soft, ambient doom. Hammered strings float over a backdrop of dark, clean chords and soft ambiance. Slowly, it builds into hanging, distorted doom. Not a thing to complain about. There aren't any vocals, aside from a spoken word piece at the end of the second track, which really improves the experience in this situation. There's always a wall of drifting sound and feedback hanging from existing chords, but the front edge of the musical movement is always heavy and clearly audible. Definitely a must for anyone who likes Nadja and wants something heavier and darker.
Both sides of this split are quite desirable, in wildly different ways, for fans of ambient, dark, noisy metal. Give it a listen.
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