Band:	Five The Hierophant
Album:	Apeiron
Style:	Jazz, Avantgarde metal, Post-metal
Release date:	October 18, 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. Apeiron
02. Moon Over Ziggurat
03. Tower Of Silence I
04. Initiatory Sickness
05. Uroboros
06. Tower Of Silence II

Apeiron, the title of the latest Five The Hierophant record, translates to ‘boundless’ or ‘unlimited’. It’s a rather fitting name when considering the lack of genre constraints that the band have saddled their music with.

Radu aptly placed the sound of Through Aureate Void, their previous album released back in 2021, as somewhere between the jazz drone of Neptunian Maximalism and the oddball avant-garde compositions from the Oranssi Pazuzu-Dark Buddha Rising network of musicians. At a glance, Apeiron is a continuation of its predecessor; while the leading role of the saxophone in their soundscapes is but one factor that roots the music in jazz, there’s also both an emphasis on ambient/drone textures and metallic crunch with ties to post-metal. Having said that, such an unorthodox melting pot of styles and influences doesn’t really lend itself to simple retreads.

As with previous releases, Apeiron is all-instrumental, but it doesn’t suffer for this, as the lack of vocals only aids the hypnotic aura of the album’s music. The opening title track exhibits a brief novelty right at its beginning courtesy of some phasing electronics, and Five The Hierophant explore additional new sounds and instruments across the album, including the likes of horns, gongs and violins. After those phasing sounds, however, “Apeiron” slides into a smooth proggy groove; simple saxophone melody is contrasted by multifaceted percussion, before both the heaviness of the background and the exuberance of the saxophone are gradually ratcheted up, culminating in cacophonic freakouts by the song’s halfway point, and jagged, off-kilter distortion by the climactic final moments.

One thing that “Apeiron” isn’t is particularly ambient; “Moon Over Ziggurat” spends a bit more time exploring quiet expanses in its opening stages, but it may not be surprising to learn that the two tracks that have firmer ambient/drone foundations are both titled “Tower Of Silence”. There is contrast between them, however; “Tower Of Silence I” is noisy, built upon a bed of rumbling distortion that is capped off with shamanic percussion and lingering saxophone tones, while “Tower Of Silence II” is (initially) lighter and sparser, comprised of saxophone meandering atop creepy violin plucks and faint ambience, before growing increasingly sinister.

The stripped-down bareness of the “Tower Of Silence” tracks offers welcome respite from the unorthodox rhythmicity and dynamism of the other songs on the album. “Moon Over Ziggurat” initially follows a similar path to the title track, allowing melodic saxophone to revel in calmness, but it dials up the distortion and abrasion at a faster rate, turning into a lumbering procession of discordance by the time it approaches its end. While saxophone is an instrument more prone to irritating me than most, there’s something about how Five The Hierophant summon up heavy psychedelic atmosphere through the dense guitar distortion, intelligent layering and varied percussion instruments that makes even the most frantic outbursts from the wind instrument appreciable.

Probably the standout track on the album, at least for me, is “Initiatory Sickness”; it replicates the approaches of the opening two songs, but with slightly more impressive execution, and in its latter stages, it incorporates genuinely memorable and moving saxophone melodies, before kicking into the most viscerally satisfying riff on the record for a hench, stomping climax. There’s also great riffing near the end of “Uroboros”, but my highlight of that track is perhaps instead the hypnotic atmosphere in its mid-section that is underpinned by a captivating snare march.

Apeiron and Through Aureate Void are both rather similar stylistically; if setting them against one another, I reckon this new release is a step up from the 2021 album in terms of production, and also nails the ambient aspects a bit more successfully, particularly on the “Tower Of Silence” tracks. On the flip side, there’s perhaps no song with the sheer memorability of “Fire From Frozen Cloud” off the last album, and when compared with the sprawling nature of “Pale Flare Over Marches”, perhaps the ‘main’ songs on Apeiron are a tad too similar to one another structurally. With that said, it’s another very solid release from a fascinating band with a voice that is very much recognizable as their own.