Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 12:33 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal/Ambient
Country: Germany
Label: Van Records
Year: 2016
Urfaust is a band that has achieved a few transformations through the years and that is admirable if you think they are only two members. Every release they have done is unique, regardless if it is in the form of an EP, a split or a cover. Their new effort is a full length entitled “Empty Spaces Mediation”, it consists of six songs called “Meditatum I-VI” and I can’t help making the connection with Rene Descartes’ “Meditations on First Philosophy (Meditationes De Prima Philosophia)” that were divided in six parts, written and published in the Netherlands a little bit less than 400 years ago not far away from where Urfaust are based.
Urfaust rarely give out full length works and this one is maybe the most justifiable to be called so due to its diversity and conceptual offerings. The thematic incorporation of the music with numerical exposition of the songs that has so well served Mgla for example is used by Urfaust as well to keep the experience of listening guided within a certain mind frame. The meditational concept has been used before from them in their previous full length, “Apparitions”, but the means was mostly ambient and abstract, while now we get a full exposition of Urfaust’s characteristics with a great production that lets the band’s intention and talent shine. I might be a great fan of the band’s lo-fi early days, but these are long gone and their evolution is rewarding us in a different way.
“Meditatum I” is a five-minute intro with throat singing over abstract keyboard sounds charging the atmosphere for the stages of meditations that are about to follow. “Mediatatum II” is the fastest song they have recorded to date, I don’t recollect blastbeats in any previous Urfaust release. It is filled with screams of agony and existential negation and the change in the middle gives way to a long part with proper lyrics and medium tempo only to resume briefly in the previous speed and the primacy of keyboard sounds that are left alone in the end to end the song much in the vein of Wolves In The Throne Room’s latest ambient effort. “Meditatum III” sets off with a riff whose sound and progress is the most black metal moment of the record, while the vocals become progressively more desperate and ecstatic. “Meditatum IV” has another intro with throat singing and is another slow piece with a prevailing aura of eastern mysticism in the atmosphere. “Meditatum V” is the song that reminds older material the most, since it has this distinctive clean vocals that stress every letter and a similar pace with “Ein leeres Zauberspiel” from 2010’s “Der Freiwilige Bettler” for example, but with a strange intensity and double bass drums. “Meditatum VI” is closing the record in an even more eastern vibe, with acoustic guitars and maybe sitar and if it wasn’t for the vocals to keep us in the meditating path it could have been out of context.
“Empty Space Meditations” is a complete record by all means. It shows what Urfaust is capable after 15 years of existence, looking at their back catalogue not nostalgic, but reinventing it and is aesthetically charming. As Descartes said in the prologue of his Meditations: “…I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and withdraw their minds from their senses and from all preconceived opinions”. We might as well do it with Urfaust in empty space.
4,5/6
