Filled with an atmospheric ethereal vibration, imposing an harmonically arranged majestic sincerity on the nucleus of its rhythms, Empty Space Meditation sometimes sounds as noise rock filled with deranged orchestral capacities, while managing to reiterate a fluent melodic value to the most meticulous aspects of their music. An interesting album – filled with esthetic eccentricities –, with melody over heaviness, and a philosophical downturn over aggressiveness, on this work Urfaust digresses the constraints of the rhythm, and rearranges them over a lucid rhetoric quest for harmonic beauty. And the final result, undoubtedly, is intriguing, to say the least.
With a more detailed approach to composition, defined in a basis of complex sound layers, what Urfaust does in fact could be regarded as constructionist black metal, assuming as the axis of their style Atmospheric Black Metal with a sonorous sculpting appeal. Adorning and creating above the genre a very somber and slow atmosphere of anguish and affliction, Empty Space Meditation, despite being an album with an interesting craft, will require some of your patience. This is slow sinister and elusive Black Metal, that interestingly incorporates several influences from other genres. So, this album was not made to satisfy ordinary metal heads, that are looking for the traditional BM ordeals. With a different proposal, way more ecstatic and dark, Empty Space Meditation explains itself in the title: here you have Atmospheric Black Metal, working to create a funereal and desolate atmosphere, filled with darkness and pessimism. And in what concerns the creation of an obscure and agonizing ambient sound, they succeeded quite well.
Nevertheless, despite the album being not too long – it has forty three minutes – it resent itself from a little monotony, unfortunately. Sometimes exceedingly slow, eventually you have to really extend the levels of your patience, because Empty Space Meditation manages to be too much slow music for your ears. Impeccable on the grounds of production, this album is a fine and lucid work, that exposes an interesting proposition, and goes beyond the traditional path of the genre. Nonetheless, it is not a major, nor a groundbreaking work of art. In the end, it manages to be a decent album. Sadly, doesn’t go beyond that.
Wagner