Empty Space Meditation

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Let's make one thing absolutely clear. This is not the Urfaust you knew and loved. At best this album sounds like the sonic manifestation of complacency in terms of urfaust just imitating their past works with none of the good music or ideas and at worst it sounds like a poor copycat omitting all the actually interesting elements of their music.

First of all the production. It sounds too polished and shiny to carry any real atmosphere. It is to older Urfaust records what bands like Fides Inversa are to DsO. It is not significantly cleaner (or rather most of their past work is not significantly more lo-fi) but it is lacking in character. Hilariously enough it kind of sounds like urfaust are taking notes from that garbage "post-black metal" trend. I don't have much experience with those bands but I imagine they sound a lot like this album. And this is all the more laughable when you consider how many years ago urfaust were post-black metal with their innovative style.

Even if the music here was satisfactory I would consider the production to be extremely detrimental to the experience. Speaking of that however, there is almost not a single worthwhile musical idea to be found herein. The album just drones on and on for literally half an hour before anything even slightly exciting happens, and by that time you realize that just like the tracks that preceeded it, this track just pales in comparison to the band's previous efforts. Anything before or after that is not just lackluster in its execution, but flat out inexcusable in terms of songwriting or ideas. Just from the intro I could tell that this would be a boring record, as it showcases this exact lack of notable ideas. It's very uninspired and overstays its welcome. And what follows that is a monotonous sea of generic melodies that not much effort could have gone into composing as well as the most underwhelming vocals we've heard from Willem so far. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. Sometimes the guitars and blasting drums are in the front and sometimes the singing is. None of this matters however.

There is no substance to this record, just get Einsiedler and forget this even exists.