Thunderous and fateful, a rock opera of weight and ruin.
Formed in Brest in 2012, Appalooza has carved out a name in the European heavy rock underground as a trio unafraid of scope or spectacle. Signed to Ripple Music, the band previously released Appalooza (2018), The Holy of Hollies (2021) and The Shining Song (2023). Their fourth full-length, The Emperor of Loss, pushes further into the collision point where stoner-rock’s desert haze, sludge’s suffocating density and post-metal’s theatrical build-and-release entwine. In simpler terms: this is music that wants to be tectonic, not just loud. Riffs move like boulders, grinding down a mountainside; songs are staged like acts in a tragedy.
“Grieve” opens as a six-minute odyssey. A jagged desert-rock riff unfurls like a mirage, only to lock into a lumbering groove that stomps forward with the patience of shifting plates. The guitars don’t simply play — they circle and constrict, like snakes around prey. Vocals arrive as a ritual chant, less sung than intoned, before the song collapses into near-silence, as if someone had cut the lights mid-performance. When it re-emerges, distortion and cymbal crashes smother the silence, the sound becoming sludgy due to its sheer viscosity.
“Magnolia” ratchets the tension. Percussion rolls like thunderclouds breaking open, serrated guitars slashing through the sky. The bass doesn’t sit beneath so much as shove the song forward, every note like a boot hitting wet pavement. The track feels like the moment before impact, when gravity has already decided your fall. “Stockholm” then trades speed for pressure. The drums are the hammer that pounds insistence into every measure. A quieter passage midway isn’t relief — it’s recalibration. And when the riff returns, it feels denser.
“Cradle to the Grave” changes texture — echo-laden guitar scatter to create space before the rhythm section carves its way in. The snare lands with ritualistic repetition, almost a mantra, while a solo interrupts the trance. Unlike earlier tracks, it doesn’t end in abruption but in a slow dissolve, fading with the gentleness its title suggests.
“Emperor” marks the dramatic pivot point. A fingerpicked acoustic line enters hushed, mournful. By the two-minute mark, that same motif erupts in distortion, feedback stretching the melody until it becomes its shadow-self. The song swells and thins again, a cyclical pattern mirroring tragic form: rise, fall, rise, fall — inevitable and fated.
“Tarantula” reasserts Appalooza’s core sound, characterized by machinery-based instrumentation and vocals barked rather than sung, accompanied by an instrumental storm. “Iscariot,” by contrast, lingers. Its motifs circle like a pendulum caught mid-swing, pulling strength from steadiness rather than rupture.
“Adios Maria” closes the record with the most surprising gesture. Nylon strings and Spanish-influenced inflections creep into the mix, a sudden warmth in a record built on iron. The vocals, stretched and aching, deliver the record’s proper farewell. It’s the first time the band lets fragility lead, and it lands like a final, weary exhale.
The bonus track,“Matador,” arrives like an encore: brisker, stomping riffs designed for immediacy. Where the album ends in sorrow, this coda kicks up dust, an afterimage burning on the retina.
Across The Emperor of Loss, Appalooza deals in contrasts: the acoustic is ruptured by distortion, sudden surges break hypnotic repetition and the riff mutates mid-track. The effect is less about genre labels than about structuring tension and release, weight and suspension. This isn’t just metal — it’s dramaturgy cast in feedback and reverb, a rock tragedy where every riff is another turn of fate’s wheel.
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