Urfaust – The Constellatory Practice

Band: Urfaust
Title: “The Constellatory Practice”
Label: Van Records
Release Date: 4 May 2018
Country: Netherlands
Format reviewed: FLAC

Starting with just a reminder, “Urfaust” is known as an earlier forms of Goethe’s “Faust”, so let’s not be surprised – this is very accurate reference to what we can expect from the music of the band – Hell.

As stated on their FB page, “Urfaust is an occult audial vessel of delirious madness that was invoked in 1999. Ranging from Cruel Black Metal Ambient to Bombastic Drone Rituals, to minimalistic low-fi Black Magick: Urfaust does it all…”

Though all these years, Urfaust have achieved a super loyal fan base awaiting and accepting their release as almost a fetish, something out of this world. And indeed with their five albums since 2003, the band’s music and art proved to be extremely interesting and not just for everybody. If you like them, you will love them. Otherwise, you will probably skip and/or hate them.

With “The Constellatory Practice”, Urfaust again are taking us to another trance journey, a ritualistic, spiritual descentinto the void of nothingness. With 6 tracks and 53 minutes of pure terrifying soundscaping, touching the territories of doom, ambient, drone, IX (guitars and vocals) and VRDRBR (drums) deliver a genuine transcendental occult experience, abounding of minor sounds, blackgazing and constantly drawing and piling dark musical pictures, for the small soul to drown in. Actually this album is even different than I expected, compared to Urfaust’s previous work.

The 13-minutes opener “Doctrine of Spirit Obsession” is a pure doom track with clear vocals, low choir’s parts and ritualistic choruses. The vibrato of IX could be found almost in the whole album, which only completes the horrifying overall feeling of the abyssing in these 53 minutes. “Behind The Veil Of Trance Sleep” is an absolute nightmare track – noises, screams, echoing drums – abyssal again, low, drone. “A Course in Cosmic Meditation” is the shortest track in the album and calms down a bit the overall falling through for a while, but just to add an enormous pain and grief during the playing of this record. “False Sensorial Impressions” is heavy, drone-black-ambient track with distorted sound, screams and abyssal (did I say abyssal before?) nightmarish (did I say nightmare before) fall through (did I say fall through before?). “Trail Of The Conscience oF The Dead” continues for another almost 13 minutes the doom line of this record including clean and operatic vocals, crushing funeral melody and heavy as FK slow tempo, and twisted end. The last track “Eradication Through Hypnotic Suggestion” includes twisted (did I say twisted before?) keyboards track, screams and whispers from the abyss (here it comes again!) and nightmarish (and again!) feeling.

“The Constellatory Practice” is another experimental album by both musicians, a very dark hypnotic journey, with doom, black, drone, ambient patterns, to complete another black circle, another ritual. It is an experience which either could bore you to death or actually could take you to unknown territories and bring out some unknown feelings. For me it is a great record. Another epic album to play when I want to let go off this world. I recommend to you, light some candles at home and spend time with it. Blackgaze. Drown into the abyss.
7.5/10 Count Vlad

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