Urza - The Omnipresence Of Loss (CD)

Review
Everything is Noise

Something that always intrigues me about music is the vast spectrum of which is can affect different people. One person can absolutely fall head-over-heels for a genre, and another might not touch it with a ten-foot auxiliary cord. This seems to be particularly true about the metal scene. There are the ‘prog nerds’, the ‘metalcore bros’, the ‘thrash metalheads’, and so on. Many seem to write themselves off into a category of whatever they enjoy the most and more artists from that realm just keep floating their way. That being said, the genre also holds a few outliers; the sub-genres that fans of the more prominent themes must seek out specifically. In this case, I’m talking about funeral doom metal. Band in point: Urza, with their newest album The Omnipresence of Loss. And maybe it’s my affinity for dark and macabre elements, but funeral doom metal is a sub-genre for which I have a very soft spot. So when I was introduced to Urza, I was in.

The Omnipresence of Loss is the first full-length release of the Berlin-based group, and boy, does it leave a good impression. The album opens with the gruff-in-a-good-way “Lost In Decline” that consumes the listener for a whopping seventeen minutes of sultry darkness. This track serves as the perfect introduction to the album in its entirety, as it continues down the path of nihilistic resistance with its successor, “A History of Ghosts” to fully solidify the listener’s idea that they may no longer on the same plane as everyone else around them.


In an interview about the album, the band’s members stated that upon writing the album, ‘we had not a concrete kind of concept, but it all got together and we gathered lyrics that fit the music to the core: reflecting negative aspects in life as loss of hope, loss of beliefs, loss in general, apocalyptic prophecies.’ Which, in all honesty, is exactly what I like to hear about the choices in my doom metal repertoire. For those unfamiliar with doom metal, the sub-genre can essentially be summed up by lower-tuned guitars, long, hefty breakdowns, and contain lyrics (if there are any) with themes of despair. One reason I believe it’s an easy sect of the metal scene to enjoy is that it is inherently very deep. Doom does not have to work hard to get the listener to pay attention to it. For me, I find most doom bands have something to say that typically throws me into a bit of existential dread. Call me a bit of a masochist, but that is exactly what I want out of any artistic work.

Heavy hitters like “Path of Tombs” and “From the Vaults to Extermination” stay true to Urza‘s mission with a whole cacophony of gruesome guitar riffs and bass slams, accompanied by some gut-wrenching wails of despair that perfectly encapsulate what funeral doom is all about. Then, the album comes to a triumphant conclusion with “Demystifying the Blackness”, with its sticky, sludgy blasts and thunderous melody, to represent a feeling of utter acceptance of, and maybe even survival through, the impending doom of an apocalyptic fate. This is truly the album to whip out when you are exhausted and ready to wallow in all of life’s squabbles.


I am well-aware that funeral doom is not for everyone. Its propensity for dark, unnerving themes are not the most appealing to all audiences. However, I urge those who are willing to give it a chance. Whether you, like myself, are more driven by the concepts or messages being portrayed when it comes to art, or you are more entranced by the technical, theoretical side of music, I strongly believe that The Omnipresence of Loss will strike a chord with you. It is, overall, very worthy of its placement both in the funeral doom metal world, and in the world of metal as a whole.

Author: Natalie Dominguez

Review
Metal Archives
9.4/10
27.08.2019

I have a soft spot for doom metal and while I own just a few records of that style in physical format given the right circumstances and mood it can be a nice experience to get drawn into a dark and melancholic world. There is a certain coziness sitting at home when the weather is cold outside with a cup of tea or a glass of red wine listening to some slow and heavy songs and get lost in those hypnotizing soundscapes. Urza is my first foray into the sub-genre of funeral doom and while I am not an expert when it comes to this niche and its history I think it is fair to say that funeral doom bands take a lot of what defines doom metal and push the formula to the extreme. So in short I would say the songs are even longer and slower and the level of despair is ramped up to the maximum making the listening experience even more intense.

However, it would be unfair to reduce the music by this German band to this description as their music is fascinating and crafted with a great feeling for songwriting. The basis of the music is comprised of crushingly heavy riffing akin to Scandinavian death/doom metal classics played in a slower and more stoic way. The main chords are colossal and the buzz-saw tone of the guitar helps to create a filthy and doom-soaked atmosphere. The lead guitar harmonies are cleverly implemented and offer hints of melody into an otherwise atonal framework. The main themes have a very melancholic vibe lending the record a dark and slightly depressive nature. The stoic patterns are having a very hypnotical effect on the listener.

Each track has a clearly defined build-up making use of eerie yet breathtaking harmonies often culminating in an epic conclusion. Soft and mellow parts are used to create a dense atmosphere by being cleverly weaved into the crawling riff attacks and the overall picture. Dystopian themes and dreamy soundscapes are building sophisticated passages and giving the whole music a mystical and hypnotizing touch. There is a certain level of melancholy constantly dwelling in the background and although the overall atmosphere being pretty desperate and bleak you cannot help but getting drawn deeper and deeper into the swirl of darkness and its irresistible fascination.

It can become a bit of a difficult listen as the band keep slowing down to a crawl most of the time and the guitarists downpick slowly to the slogging beat only occasionally upping the tempo in certain sections by a few nuances. Lovers of faster and more casual metal might find this boring and start to look elsewhere. While this is for sure not the kind of music I could listen to each and all day I highly appreciate the mood Urza are able to create, leading to a satisfying listening experience given the right circumstances.

The growling is deep and powerful underlining the haunting nature of the album. The production is thick and heavy but there is enough room to breathe for each instrument. No detail has been lost in the mix and can be noticed while carefully listening. Overall I can only recommend to consume “The Omnipresence of Loss” as a whole as the stringent flow of the music and the subtle variation of similar signature themes over the whole playing time make this album one connected piece of musical art. Highly recommended for cold and foggy autumnal days.

Author: Edmund Sackbauer

Review
Antichrist Magazine
6.9/10
06.05.2019

You are now falling into deep void of sleep and despair, the atmosphere crushing in pressure, reminiscent of anesthesia and unconsciousness. What does this have to do with Urza’s: The Omnipresence of Loss you may ask? Because it is a funeral album of course! Urza is a funeral death/doom metal band from Berlin, Germany and The Omnipresence of Loss is their debut album of 2019. Doom metal is a genre I do not excessively tangle myself with, and this applies to the funeral sub-genre even more so. However, with Urza’s beautiful cover art that portrayed an atmospheric world of darkness and lonesome, I gravitated towards this album and had anticipations of picking an unfamiliar genre to listen to. And upon listening to the over an hour long album, I was thoroughly discomforted with the material presented, as it reverberated with signs of a horrible album. But, in my most recent re-listen, I found myself having much more of a diverting time.

My first grievances were innate from the get go, as they are integral to the album at its core. Funeral metal is excruciatingly taxing on my ability to maintain a consistent level of consciousness and sensible awareness, or in short: It makes me sleepy. I feel I should make it clear that it is no fault of the album on a technical side or the songwriting side, which causes me this minute drowsiness, because there have been albums I’ve fallen asleep to, that were incredibly disagreeably and were not funeral or doom related. However, it is works like the funeral doom metal band Asunder and The Omnipresence of Loss that cause this endurance test of wakefulness that depreciate my opinion of these works. And this not to insult the genre in any way, but the constant droning of the fuzzy guitars and their sluggish yet incessant pace just know how to lull me into a slumber. And it’s a shame as well, as if I were more invested in the genre, I could dissect the numbing hum of the guitars and appreciate their mild beauty. However, what I can appreciate is how well everything fits together in this album.

I’d love to note that on my second listen to this album, I took the initiative to keep myself invested and read along the lyrics to each of the 5 songs featured. And in all honesty, it made the experience better in my opinion, as the lyrics tone of dreary nihilism, loss, melancholy, and all around negativity matched the sluggish, tired tone of the music perfectly. This is an example of lyrics that can make or break an album, and that lyrics actually have purpose and matter almost as much as every other aspect of going into an album. There’s no anger in the vocal delivery as well, but a languid desperation, scarred by pain and misery that accentuate the lyrics tenfold. Thomas’ vocal direction was peculiar at first, using guttural, almost slam like vocal styles to punctuate this album, but in hindsight, his long, drawn out growls, howls, shrieks and cries add a fine level of detail to the abject torment of loss that this album projects. The lyrics themselves, paint a picture of a decimated world torn asunder by plague and illness, whilst also preaching the pain of mortal isolation and death. Couple these lyrics with their delivery, then accentuate both of these with the dream-like imagery of the cover, and boom, perfect album tone that I’m sure every funeral fan will adore, as I found myself coming around to like it.

The sound of the album is to say complex, yet simple in delivery. It’s not quite dream-like or fantastical, and not nightmarish either, almost acting like a purgatory of slumber, lost and miserable. The guitars by Oliver and Marucs are the standard doom pace and don’t stand out on a technical level, but carry a hum that is downright hypnotizing, no doubt a cause for my initial troubles with this album. However, it’s not the same song and dance for the entire duration, as some faster picking is seen on tracks like “Path of Tombs” or echoed acoustics on the album opener “Lost In Decline”. These changes aren’t drastic and meld perfectly with other parts of the songs, whilst also breaking up the monotony, as some of these songs are not afraid to speed things up slightly. The bass as well, courtesy of Marc Leclerc, has a fuzzy, warm timbre to it, which integrated with the guitars, is as soothing as it is course and tired. Hannes on drums provides as well, with an echoed, archaic sound that resonates within the void of these crawling tracks.

While I enjoy singing praises of the highlights of this album, it still comes down to the music for me and what’s going on. An album can have perfect synchronization with itself in all aspects, but at the nitty-gritty, is it for me? I do enjoy the tone, and how it’s executed, but the major problem as I established earlier is that this album puts me to sleep. Do I enjoy reading along and being engaged? Yes, absolutely. Should I have to read to be engaged with an album? No, absolutely not. If it were much shorter, like maybe sheer down the songs a bit, or scrap one or two, that’d be fine, but that can really only be done in the latter. This isn’t the longest album I’ve listened to, only about an hour and two minutes, but being a funeral death/doom metal album, you really feel that run time, minute by minute, second by second. I was not looking forward to the slog of re-listening to this album, as it’s a hefty engagement. But, if you’re into the doom stuff, it’s sure enough to be a bang for your buck.

Author: Yade Malice

Review
Metal Temple
8/10
24.04.2019

Funeral Death and Doom Metal always make for a rock steady marriage. Funeral Death's Earth-rumbling vocal styles match Doom's cavernous bass, seamlessly. Doom's iconic molasses tempos pair wonderfully with Funeral Death's lyrics of heartless destruction of man. The two are more than meant for each other. One such successful marriage story is URZA. Hailing from Berlin, an area not known for many Doom bands, URZA has been active for four years. The Omnipresence of Loss is their debut. Like an Eldritch horror version of SUMAC, URZA crawls around the deep where the air is thin, their many eyes, blind and clouded over blink in unison as it crawls through mud in search of cave insects.

Frontman Thomas' booming vocal presence is felt deep in your ribcage as he bellows like the blind cave monster. Like GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR and HARIKARI FOR THE SKY, tracks stretch and sprawl like so many deserted open roads, perfect for self-reflection and listening to your own troubled thoughts bounce and reverberate off the walls of your skull as you stew in your own feelings of complete isolation. There are moments of uncertain fear as the mud-dwelling cave creature grumbles, snuffling around in the filth for that elusive scent of flesh with the appetizing stench of terror on it.

URZA is all about domination; guitars and vocals buzzing alongside crashing cymbals and plodding snares, all sounds conspiring into a sonic machine built to run you down. Like a towering combine harvester; maybe several. "A History of Ghosts" is complete with moans of the anguishing damned as well as the snarls of the demons torturing them. "Path of Tombs" is ghoulishly heavy with the weight of fifty stone sarcophagi bearing down on your soul.

URZA is a vacuum of light and in its darkness lie swarms of blood-thirsty parasites.

Songwriting: 10
Originality: 7
Memorability: 7
Production: 10

Author: Kyle Scott

Review
Kaosguards
16/20
15.03.2019

Il faut scruter attentivement la saisissante pochette de ce premier album de URZA pour tenter de saisir ce qui peut bien motiver ce quintette berlinois à pratiquer un Death Doom Metal en mode Funeral !

On aperçoit en effet la frêle silhouette d'un quelconque prêtre brandissant un bâton surmonté d'une croix, juché sur une proéminence rocheuse sombre (à moins qu'il ne s'agisse d'un amas gazeux délétère) qui se découpe à peine sur fond d'un ciel d'une noirceur apocalyptique, percé en son centre par des raies d'une lumière qu'on devine plus destructrice qu'apaisante. Mon hypothèse est que nos braves garçons qui constituent URZA ont voulu tenté de mettre en musique les forces telluriques implacablement à l’œuvre, la noirceur implacable entourant le personnage étant vaguement contrastée par cette lumière de fin du monde.

Pour ce qui d'apporter la lourdeur, le côté caverneux, on peut compter sur l'inspiration Doom Death : riffs titanesques au rendu grondant, batterie pesante, vocaux gutturaux mais encore relativement articulés. La lenteur ne suffisant pas, la part Funeral Doom impose une extrême lenteur, dont il faut souligner qu'elle se trouve convenablement animée par la batterie : rien de particulièrement fou ni trépidant mais on échappe tout de même au minimum métronomique. Par ailleurs, des arrangements, voire des plages atmosphériques ponctuent judicieusement les cinq immenses compositions, créant des zones de contrastes bienvenues et renforçant paradoxalement le sentiment d'écrasement qui s'empare de l'auditeur.

Excroissance maximaliste et atmosphérique du Doom Death, le Funeral Doom se trouve ici régénéré par son parent, signe que URZA vise à imposer une marque qui lui est propre dans des sous-genres extrêmement balisés.

Author: Alain Lavanne