Review Summary: Missing, but always present.
The very tomes of funeral doom often fit into a well rounded niche of expansive melancholy, deliberately pulling on the heartstrings of the genre’s listeners. Largely, the drone meets death variant of doom carries with it the most weight of the styles notoriety, leaving a wake of similarly sounding harsh to beautiful landscapes painted on a portrait of sound. The foundation developed from taking our darkest emotions and twisting them along compositions of length gave life to the very meaning of funeral doom and as always, Until Death Overtakes Me craft lonely despair to the fullest.
Hailing from Belgium (and largely a one man project led by Stijn Van Cauter) Until Death Overtakes Me specialise in a somber brand of drawn out music, relying largely on a chasm of simple synth-led orchestrate and ringing chords. The permeation of ringing respite makes comfortable any measure of minimalist nihilism. It’s a theme that’s carried clearly from record to record. Long, dragging track times add cohesion and dismay to Until Death Overtakes Me’s (UDOM) newest offering. For the most part,
Missing is less “refreshing” as the same ritualistic formula rips into the listeners’ subconscious. This lack of refreshment deliberately takes a turn into the foreboding, clutching at the darkest moments in the hearts of its victims, before gently letting go as organ pipes lay a foundation for what is to come.
Despite the usual avoidances to be found within the realms of funeral doom, there’s credit to be given to those artists that articulate a negativity in human life and transform it into a composition that not only relates, but builds in whole. By the time the introductory passages of ‘Never Found’ enter the fray there’s the outward chance that every new listener will have a predisposition to sadness and loss. One simply doesn’t stumble onto UDOM by happy coincidence. With that in mind it’s also hard to move past the deliberate monotonous poison that seeps through the speakers. Sure, there’s power and poise to
Missing’s delivery, but the journey doesn’t quite equate to the time it takes to reach the album’s ending. There’s something
missing, something just out of reach. Overall, the doom by numbers style of UDOM meets the expectations required for a great record within the genre.
Missing may find itself easily outweighed by some of the doom magnates of the last few years, but the shadow it casts meets the light in the same way.
