The seventh album by April Rain, titled Aperture, was released on October 10, 2025, and in my opinion it is truly—deeply, intensely, almost strangely—a brilliant work within the post-rock genre. This album carries a kind of sadness, a certain mood, a particular emotional weight that doesn’t want to make you cry or squeeze tears out of you. Instead, it wants to throw you into a room, lock the door behind you, and leave you alone—so that your thoughts can slowly wear you down.
What really intrigued me is that one of the things I was actively looking for in this album was war. Considering that April Rain is a Ukrainian band based in Russia, and that about a year after their previous album Russia invaded Ukraine, I expected to hear something different—an album explicitly shaped by the theme of war. And in a way, that is exactly what I heard. Just not in the way I expected. The music on this album is not angry. It’s not slogan-driven. It’s not loud or self-important. Let me put it this way: this album is not about war—it is war-damaged.
It feels like it’s about separation. About displacement. About losing a home. About belonging neither here nor there. The feeling this album gives you is like being left alone in an empty room, the door locked behind you. But through the window, you can still see a place you once came from—a place that hasn’t left your mind yet, but is no longer yours, and no longer something you belong to. |
