Review Chris Chantler

UNTIL DEATH OVERTAKES ME

'Deep Dark Red'/'Absence Of Life'

SELF-RELEASED

This sounds like it was recorded in black and white. This is two CDs stuffed with the most suffocatingly bleak, damp, despondent avantgarde funeral doom; strung-out leads vein across distant, shrouded riffs while minimalistic timpani percussion thunders in the background, a ghostly keyboard weaves its eerie vigil through the gloom, accompanied by an ocean-deep, furry, monotone growl, seemingly emanating from beneath the music like a suffocating beast. 'Absence Of Life' is so slow and stripped-down as to be practically dark ambient with an electric guitar - especially on the eighteen-minute slab of tortured monochrome psychedelia 'And Death Took Her Smile Away' - while 'Deep Dark Red' is a little more abrasive and brutal; a direction I'd encourage.

The funeral doom scene is currently producing some of the most extreme music of all time, and with such mighty names as Skepticism, UDOM, Hierophant, Pantheist, Worship and Mournful Congregation, it's one of the strongest, most fascinating, intense, creative, isolated and rewarding of all subgenres. Dare you enter the vast fields of unnameable cosmic sorrow? Turn left at the mountains of madness...

Email the band at deathforsaken@hotmail.com or go to http://listen.to/udom

[9] Chris Chantler