Post-rock, once a celebrated and fawned over genre, has taken its share of slings and arrows lately, what with progenitors like Tortoise making watered-down jazz fusion records while stalwarts like Godspeed You! Black Emperor have simply dropped out of sight. A lack of heavy-hitters wasn't the real issue, though; the major problem plaguing the form was its sheer abundance of artists. For a while, it seemed as if each new day brought with it another jazz-informed metal band with a penchant for 18/42 time signatures and month-long instrumental songs. However, being off the skag for a while makes you remember how good it can be, and in this case, it takes a post-prog sextet like Apse to remind us just how enthralling post-rock can be.

Apse's self-titled debut is a languid and elaborate affair, equal parts Eno drambiance, neoclassical shakedown and stuttering avant-metal fury. Its movements are dense and impassioned, with enough tense arpeggios and blissful glissandi to make the whole Hotel2Tango crowd sit up and take notice. One second they're Morricone-esque in their juxtaposition of dark and light, the next they're Sonic Youth after a six-month pill and pot bender -- but when they're both at once, they're absolutely devastating.

"Balat" wraps tribal rhythms in washed-out guitar and star-crossed rhythms, striking an uneasy balance between fragility and dissonance, while the jaw-dropping "Ae" ignites a blue-flame siege of circadian guitar loops and pulse-wave feedback drones. "Marrer" brings vocals into the mix for the first time, though they're hardly discernible through the thick morass of flailing percussion and haywire electronics that hijack the melody at the song's midpoint. "Keep" is the imaginary soundtrack for an underground chase scene that David Fincher hasn't committed to celluloid just yet, its terse electronics and hairpin rhythmic patterns leading you down paths you're not quite ready to traverse.

Apse's melodic aptitude separates them from their less inspired peers. They don't fall prey to the accusations of pointlessness and self-indulgence that typically dog the genre, instead taking great pains to carry their songs to logical, if unorthodox, conclusions, swirling a healthy dose of melody into their simmering prog stew while they're at it.