The opening three tracks by Australia's Austere are very similar to the band's debut _Withering Illusions and Desolation_: raw but well recorded mid-paced black metal, spacious song structures combining repetitive guitars, a thick, fuzzy wall of sound pierced by some of the most hillarious and therefore definitely kvlt shrieking vocals. The middle track is actually an instrumental bridging "When Even Tomorrow Looks Away" with the absolutely beautiful thirteen minute epic gloom of "There's Nothing Left", easily Austere's best recording yet.

While pairing the two bands might seem logical, as their approach and concept partly coincides, Isolation's material fails to impress after Austere's most hypnotizing start. The Germans are less black metal and more doom oriented (with some obvious Katatonia and My Dying Bride moments here and there), employing slow and rather standard melodic riffs plus rather out of tune clean vocals that we could have done without. Things start well enough with the somber acoustic guitars on "From Nowhere", but until the time you reach "...To Nowhere" these 30 minutes worth of music have turned into a dragging, plain unexciting experience. Keeping the attention of the listener throughout a sixteen minute track is a skill Isolation haven't mastered yet.