Bereavement ravages the mind, and time promises to blunt its strength. A pale wasteland may recover one day, but the guilt that comes with fading memories takes root instead. And here, time only strengthens it.
Short introduction on this project. Until Death Overtakes Me is one of this planet’s most unique funereal-based sonic acts, run by SVC aka Stijn Van Cauter. I guess I have never, ever, been disappointed by any release under this specific moniker, or any other project in which this guy is, or was, involved with. For some releases I did write down my thoughts in the past; those I could remember, well, these links have been added below, yet there might be more.
Anyway, this very sympathetic guy does work closely with Aesthetic Death, one of my personal all-time venerated labels ever. I mean this from the bottom of my heart; this phrase is not just some populistic statement, but a true-valored expression of my personal adoration for the releases on this label, as well as the crew behind the label (read: the honorable Stu!). With ‘working closely together’ (i.e. the artist and the label), I am referring to both releasing Until Death Overtakes Me stuff, as well as taking care of visual duties for several other Aesthetic Death releases. But hey, this writing is about my personal opinion, both objective and subjective (I am the reviewer, so I can write whatever I want, but from my warmest pit of passion within my heart, it will be another open-viewed expression of both intrinsic adoration and external exploration), about Until Death Overcomes Me’s new album Diagenesis.
This release is a four-tracker, lasting for more than one hour (!). It was recorded in 2023 and eventually released in collaboration with the aforementioned mighty Aesthetic Death company. The physical edition, being a six-panel compact-disc, is quite limited, coming with quite explicit and intriguing semi-color-less cover artwork; probably done by Stijn himself, I guess.
As clear images become abstract dreams, guilt bears down with its growing, crippling mass.
Those trusted with the previous sound-sculptures of Until Death Overtakes Me aka UDOM might imagine what follows next. Actually, this project once sort of created its own sound and its own approach, and ever since it did not change that dramatically at all, not stylistically nor conceptually. Why changing a winning team anyway. And indeed, Diagenesis does continue the coarse, severe and void-laden core we’re all trusted with. It’s all about the slowest yet mostly intense expression of somber, darkening doom, minimalistic in approach, yet abundant in atmosphere. The basic structure is built around both hammering and long-stretched string-lines at the one hand, and narcotic-analgesic synth-harmonies at the other hand. That is somehow the main content of the burdensome package, as I dare to define this in its most simplistic form. The keyboard-led passages and the guitar-based excerpts intertwine organically, with room for both their individual expression as well as their multiple and well-balanced symphonious interplay. Of course, this foundation gets neatly injected by two other unique characteristic components, being the limitary use of pounding beats and of course the alienated, deeply-gurgling vocal chords. These growls do not exactly ‘tell’ a story through lyrical poetry, but the low-pitched timbre supports the profound message of dreams that might fade away into oblivion.
The only ones to understand, who could ever forgive, have already gone ahead, and are those same ones fading out of view.
Excruciatingly slow, this funeral march – in this release’s case divided into four different yet naturally cohesive chapters – crawls forth, covering the listener’s subconscious within a nebula of asphyxiating yet beautiful darkness, transporting the listener’s mood with fairness and melancholia towards a dimension where both enlightenment and the deprivation of light dance hand in hand. Remembrance, repentance, grievance, penance and desperation get translated through sonically perfected cobweb-like constructions, with chimerical neuron-like connections that gather the wintery ambience of aggrieved symphonic aural artistry with an amazingly massive droning dominion. Orchestral grandeur, like in White Light, strengthen the conflicting conformity. …the sincere beauty of anguish represented through sonic elegance…
When they’re truly gone, only death may forgive…!
https://aestheticdeath.bandcamp.com/album/diagenesis
https://www.aestheticdeath.com/releases.php?mode=singleitem&albumid=6545
https://nulll.net/music/store.php
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/until-death-overtakes-me
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/nulll-collective
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gruulvoqh
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/arcane-voidsplitter