Album of the Year - 2nd Place

Urfaust - Empty Space Meditation

So, after 5 days of flu, Tonsillitis and the utterly disgusting Bronchitis, I am finally able to write without being sick, falling over (inner ear infection also, forgot that one), or generally wishing death would come and subside what my walking abortion of a life this week has become, so here I am.

And what a band to talk about for my first words back.

Urfaust, if you've never heard of them, are a Dutch ambient black metal band, a duo who's style creates an inescapable feeling of emptiness, hopelessness and bleakness at the future of you, me, this planet, and everything else in the universe. A desolate expression of despair and with no hint of any hope or redemption for any of us. It's everything you would ever want to hear from a black metal band.

The bands early material was mainly on the ambient side of the ambient black metal coin, but now on their fourth full length, not to mention a bag full of EPs, the coin is standing very much on its edge, and the band have put together the ambience and the hopelessness together to make a stunning record.

"Empty Space Meditation" is the stand out black metal album of the year by a distance, this is a piece of work which should bring a significant increase in attention to this outstanding duo from the Netherlands, everything on here, from the guttural throat singing, to the ambivalent atmosphere, the production, the progressive approach to building and constructing the songs is finely balanced on the knife edge of making you want to world to collapse, and thinking it already has.

Every time the album ends, you will listen to it again, you will stare at whatever is in front of you, and stare right through it, thinking about the meaning of the universe, and how pointless it is (so do not listen in work like I did, you will do nothing all day). This album pushes you to the edge time and time again, but has you desperate to come back for another hit of degradation. A stunning piece of art.

KC

Album Of The Year

2 - Urfaust - 'Empty Space Meditation'
3 - Thrawsunblat - 'Metachthonia'
4 - Trap Them - 'Crown Feral'
5 - Cobalt - 'Slow Forever'
6 - Ihsahn - 'Arktis'
7 - Bossk - 'Audio Noir'
8 - Anaal Nathrakh - 'The Whole of the Law'
9 - Gojira - 'Magma'

10 - Boss Keloid - 'Herb Your Enthusiasm'