In my observation, humans screw up on both sides of the Bell Curve: the dumb pound out repetitive emotions, and the intelligent do everything right like good A+ students according to what they see around them, making a repetition of what already exists.
On paper, Apotheosis is the perfect album and people like me should love it. Good concept, excellent grasp of black metal instrumentals, no jaunty rock-blues or maudlin-emo moods, great cover art… in fact, everything is perfect with only about five percent of a complete score remaining: this album is boring.
Symmetrical melodic riffs march up and down, gently rising and falling like the breathing of a sound sleeper. Songs break for riff exposition, then return to theme, but there is almost no conflict and thus direction to these pairs of riffs. This is an A+ take on what black metal is now, but that is a xerox of a photograph of a sketch of a silhouette, and retains nothing but aesthetics.