CoC : Until Death Overtakes Me - Prelude to Monolith : Review

Until Death Overtakes Me - _Prelude to Monolith_
(Firebox Records, 2003)
by: Pedro Azevedo (8 out of 10)

Until Death Overtakes Me is guaranteed to at least double the dark clouds in your sky in one hour. In fact, if you close your eyes and really pay attention, I think you will be able to see the clouds gathering. The music created by this Belgian one-man project can be summed up thus: extremely slow, depressive and atmospheric doom metal. Even though the band name was taken from My Dying Bride's "Black God" lyrics (as the bio humbly points out), this is a very different affair. The music features church-like organ, rumbling death vocals, very sparse percussion, a Summoning-like guitar buzz and occasional plucking of sombre strings. The tracks can range up to over 20 minutes in length, and lack the kind of structure that might make you call them songs, often even bordering on ambient. Those of you in the know will be thinking Skepticism by now, and indeed that is the closest match to _Prelude to Monolith_ I can think of. The music remains exceptionally bleak throughout: it never picks up speed or goes into a riff of any kind; instead, it just floats on the black wings of the organ dirges and sporadic booming percussion. The guitar buzz simply sits in the background without ever forming a distinguishable riff, nor do the barely human death vocals ever form a recognizable word. It should come as no surprise that the album has considerable hypnotic qualities -- or it may be likely to induce sleep in case you're not into this kind of music. A very extreme and worthwhile release exclusively for dedicated fans of funeral doom.

Contact: http://www.firebox.fi

(article published 30/4/2003)