Desolate (Marche Funebre Productions)

 “Desolate” is actually the only release of this one man project, formed by no one else than Mr. Stijn Van Cauter, mastermind of well know projects such Until Death Overtakes Me and Fall Of The Grey Winged One among others. This work was firstly released on Van Cauter’s own label Nulll Records in 2003 and, as far as I know, this version went out stock and is currently discontinued. The version I’ve got in my hands right now, re-released under Stygian Crypt sub-label Marche Funebre Productions, comes with the original artwork and really nice packaged… Well, let’s go to the music, Beyond Black Void is, as the name rather implies, an extremely dense piece of Funeral Drone/Doom Metal. “Desolate” is a highly atmospheric, yet awfully obscure and crude, work, where the droning guitars drive the whole album’s oppressive atmospheres during almost the entire disc. This monolithic massive riff driven feeling, provides a vastly hypnotic base which is complemented by some highly ethereal guitar lines, resulting in a deeply contrasting, yet completely coherent, sound. There’re almost no vocalizations at this album, only some extremely blurry and cavernous low grunts can be heard buried behind the impenetrable wall of buzzing guitars at some passages. This album consist in just three tracks, being the longest one the second track “Storm Over Jupiter” (my absolute favourite track) clocked at 31 minutes and the shortest one, the closing track “Ever Void” clocked a 14 minutes… as you can see, time enough to fall into a meditative trance-like state, every second you just go deeper into this incredibly thick, obscure, hypnotic and minimalist piece. As with many of Van Cauter’s projects, Beyond Black Void isn’t for everyone; its composition could be extremely hard to listen for those who aren’t into this kind of music, but if you enjoy the massive sound of the extreme Funeral Drone/Doom or follows Mr. Stijn Van Cauter musical experiments (like myself) this album could be an interesting addition to your collection. (AP)