Review Summary: Urfaust decided to go out with a trippy bang that will twist your perception of black metal
Whenever I think of Urfaust the first word that comes to my mind is weird, followed by trippy and dark. They are known in the black metal community for their experimental, trippy, obscurely ambiented approach to black metal. You don’t really know what’s coming next inside most of their albums. Even production wise you may find a raw/demo type of track followed by a carefully produced orchestral dark ambient music track. Despite all these jumps in style and sound quality they somehow managed to put out coherent albums that retain a sense of whole. Knowing they split-up almost immediately after releasing this one was a bummer, but made me really intrigued to see how they decided to go out.
What I’m about to write is not intended to be comical (although it actually is, I guess). I’ll review this album the way my brain processed it, track-by-track, because it is very, very varied in nature. I would actually argue it’s the most varied LP in their discography, to the point it feels like a collaboration album with a lot of famous metal bands. It has made quite an impression on me and as of today I consider it to be my favourite Urfaust album. Without any more preambles let’s get into it:
Track 1 –
S/T: Album starts with…
Yob trying to appeal to black metal fans (what are you even doing here Mike Scheidt?). Seriously though, the vocal registry from Willem Niemarkt is insane. This track made me dream about Yob releasing a black metal influenced EP… If they ever do Urfaust will be able to say they did it before them, how crazy is that?
Track 2 –
Höllenkosmos: Finland is not so far away from the Netherlands, so Urfaust decided to arrange a trip there to meet their finnish, trippy metal brothers from
Oranssi Pazuzu. Things went trippy of course and after some psychedelics and red wine they decided to take the chance to record the second track of the album. They even added a finnish kind of title with an ‘ö’ and everything.
Track 3 –
Leere: Leviathan’s
‘The 10th Sub level of suicide’ is one of my favourite black metal albums of all time, but as a curious individual I always wondered what’s on the 11th Sub Level of suicide. Apparently Urfaust pondered on that question too cause they went where Wrest left and explored the 11th Sub-Level of Suicide. The result can be seen on Leere, the 3rd track of the album.
Track 4 –
Reliquienstaub: Lords of Chaos producers are rubbing their hands. It seems
Varg took psychedelics in prison and recorded music while tripping. The guys from Urfaust found the lost tape and decided to polish it a bit to release it under a different artist name. Don’t be fooled though, this is
Burzum on acid.
Track 5 –
Vernichtung: After dropping some acid with Varg, the guys from Urfaust went to see their dealer at the shady, local gothic pub (where would he be otherwise?) to get more of the stuff. The guy was drunk and almost unconscious so they took a picture of him that would later become the album cover. While the poor devil was gettin back to his senses they met a 90's gothic/post-punk band looking for a drummer and a vocalist, so they decided to join for a live session.
Track 6 –
Atomtod: After the live session they got the package from the dealer and went home. Two hours later… POV: You are practicing your drum patterns after taking some acid. Why release that as a track you ask? Just Urfaust doing Urfaust things…
Track 7 –
Abgrund: Have you ever had one of those demented religious neighbours who like to sing orthodox prayers aloud? The guys from Urfaust have, so they decided to throw in some depressive black metal riffs and, instead of uploading it to youtube like Andre Antunes, they used the result as the album closer. It sounds a bit like
Ludicra, which is a pretty good thing.
All in all this is a pretty intriguing listen which results in one of the most interesting albums of 2023. Final Score: 4.1
