Symphony III - Monolith

Its safe to say that driving while listening to UDOM is a bad idea. Lying down and listening to this is also out of the question. This album can and will put you to sleep, especially if your on any medication that causes somnolence. With that being said, this is one hell of a record for the rest of us with any real attention span.

The title of this album "Monolith" is nothing short of apt. This is a large, monolithic beast that hits you will wall after wall of misery drenched sound.

The production is surprisingly good. This really doesn't have much if anything in common with its predasessor 'Prelude to Monolith' (also an amazing release).

The guitars are thick and continious. The bass it thunderous, the drums are much more involved than on the prior release. The keyboards simply engulf each track giving all four offerings an oppressive yet approachable atmosphere.

The vocals are almost an after thought and are seemingly under the music. They sound like a mixture of whispers/chants and growls. Stijn really out did himself on this release.

The music is in the same vein as all UDOM releases in that its beyond slow and very minimalistic. This isn't something you "rock out" too. Its very deep and pondorus music that will leave you writhing on the floor of a dark room in agony while reaching out for the solice of a spent candle.

This is a very original piece of music not only in the Funeral Doom field but Metal in general. This is highly recommended for anyone who digs painfully slow music and/or wants to try something very, very different.

"Locked in this shell, this monumental casket... Statue forever watching them. The emptiness seems so near..."

These lyrics, taken from the third track Monolith, define the essence of Until Death Overtakes Me's new masterpiece: a journey through deepest depression, summoned by a thick fog of bleak sound. After the phenomenal Prelude to Monolith (if one doesn't consider Interludium I - Funeral Path), here comes the real game. The monolith in question is this dense mist created by heavy, hellishly slow guitars, and some of the deepest and most desperate sounding grunts I ever had to hear.

The short intro, Thus..., is a cover of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Strauss, and sounds nearly cheerful regarding what awaits next. Indeed, as soon as the first track finishes, one is thrown without warning into a word of grief and misery, where one will stay until the end: Funeral Dance is very different from the ambient version on Interludium I. What we have here is massive Ambient Funeral Doom of the slowest kind, denuded of all superfluous. The timpani, used in place of drums, strengthens the impression of hopelessness. A keyboard creates beautiful yet disturbing ambiences. Monolith continues in the same veins as Funeral Dance, with a change in atmosphere after seven minutes: the sound gets even more oppressing.

However, the real chef d'oeuvre on Symphony III - Monolith is Soon..., the last and longest track. This one contains a lot of keyboard, notably a great piano sound. The notes played are sad, depressing, simply beautiful. During more than half an hour, Soon... shows what Ambient Funeral Doom is all about. The last part should sound familiar to people who listened to other Until Death Overtakes Me works: these are the same notes as heard in the end of Symphony II - Absence Of Life and in the intro of Prelude To Monolith. This is where Symphony III stops, and maybe (hopefully) where a fourth Symphony will begin...

Personally, I must admit that I preferred Prelude To Monolith because it offered more variation between the tracks, and because of the amazing cover of Chopin's Marche Funèbre. Still, this new album is again a fantastic piece of dark music, like only Stijn Van Cauter is able to produce.

originally written for http://www.adnihilum.co.nr

Until Death Overtakes Me is well known in the Atmospheric Doom community for their morbid and deathly depressing dirges, filled with impending and foreboding emotions, hailing death and praying for their final days. In this third installment to their epic Symphony campaign of albums, they call us all, en masse, to bear witness to our own destruction, our own death, and how it looms like a Monolith before us: inescapable, imminent, unstoppable.



Keys seem to play the biggest part of the band, as they are constant and foreboding, with there being very little percussion or bass to speak of. The vocals are very atmospheric, even more atmospheric than Nortt, and fit nicely in the bleak mix, one that weaves extremely depressing atmospheres and scenes of loss; a perfect album for a rainy day, depression, sickness, or a funeral. Adding still to the gloom is the extreme length of the songs, with the shortest being around four minutes, and the longest [and last] stretching for over half an hour. While there are lead guitars, they are very sparse, with the fuzz rhythm guitar dominating, looming like a towering monolith above the keys. Although they can become annoying at times, they add a certain element of gloom and create an epic feel in the music. Lyrically, the album is amazing; such despair and misery within the odes to death, with an almost erotic feel to them.



For the avid funeral metalhead, this is one album that you must have, as well as this album's predecessors. For the rest of the world, this album may seem boring and repetitive, although that is not an excuse to not check this album out, as time may allow some growth of fondness for this work. What cannot be denied is the emotion within this music. This is the kind of emotion that would drive the world's happiest child to suicide.