Life Has No More Meaning

Miguel Galindo (member of Unexplainable, Hawking Radiation and Disemboweled Rotting Cadaver) and John McGovern (member of Laceratory, Forever Falling and Chalice of Suffering) already have several solo/side projects behind their shoulders, and their only collaboration together, Utter Failure, is a recent one, spawning a studio album, 2022’s Life Has No More Meaning. So far, there are no news of more activity or live debuting, so it may as well be confined to studio only.

Musically, the tracks here are both lengthy and primitive, but despite being labeled as depressive black metal on social media and promotional taglines, in all truth the material sounds much closer to sludge/doom and post-punk than anything else. Sure, there are requisite chromatic minor-key distorted arpeggios and tremolo leads, but the guitar recording is much more muscular, featuring the use of Drop A-tuned seven-string rhythmics, equalization is more mid-range than treble, vocals consist of rather clean, non-shrieking distant cries the recording is grungy, but slightly controlled and non-melodic, compared with the average depressive black releases it’s supposed to be inspired by.

Production is slightly unbalanced, strongly favoring the digital bass over anything else, which shows bits of laziness and bits of inspiration, featuring unfinished single-string droning that totally clashes with the guitar chording it’s supposed to be the foundation and other leads that show more melodramatic harmonies. In terms of comparison, the material harks back to the lazier, sluggish, intuitive and unpolished approach of Nocturnal Depression, Happy Days and Wigrid than the pure blackgaze variety more common in contemporary discographies: cuts like Agony and Despair and The End Is Near are based on little more than a semitone arpeggio play with slow, martial drumming and non-tonal, evil-tending tonal switching between the sections: others like Unheard Cries take a more experimental approach, separating drone-based outros and more apocalyptic tremolos around the half as a mean of sonic variation.

More obsessed with insulated, non-communicative and stale moods that turn very repetitive long before the final track kicks in, the album sticks to unfamiliar early 00’s clichés that sound disconnected to recent depressive black metal. In other words, this is a retreat to the genre’s supposed early “purity” and occult-minded black and white atmosphere. To an extent, the attempt is reached thanks also to the use of more realisting plug-ins closer to real drumming, but this also means that the album borders on the a-musical, with several dissonant spots that hardly relate at all. I’m one of such listeners who aren’t able to relate to this album at all because of this: I don’t like at all the faceless vocal approach, nor the in-a-box production, and even the scarce lyrics sound too offensive and egocentric to serve as something else beyond mere suicidal propaganda.