It has been three years since Dirge released its last album. It goes without saying that fans of the band finally got what they wanted all that time; a new album. And it’s a special one! The finished product comprises two albums; the first being a one hour disc with five songs on it (which I happen to have here) and the second one containing just the title track of the album. A song that lasts for a whole hour as well. I’m sorry for those who expected more, but we only received disc 1 of the album. Hopefully that’ll do.

To be honest with you, this album is kinda hard to review. The album starts with a song of almost 20 minutes. And that wouldn’t even bother me if it wouldn’t have given me the same feeling. The song almost crawled by, leaving me with mixed feelings. On one hand it’s kinda relaxing and stimulates the mind for some daydreaming, on the other hand, it tends to bore you after a while. Well, at least is bores me after a while. In between the relaxing parts there are some heavy eruptions but there’s no reason to call them special in any way.

The second song, ‘End, Infinite’ is basically the same trick but without the eruptions and lasting only 3 minutes. And that’s all I can tell you about it. Don’t expect any vocals here, ‘cause they’re hardly present on this album.

The third song lasts for about 15 minutes in which the first 3 and a half minutes are again filled with long-stretched landscapes before finally something happens. A low-tempo eruption is unleashed and every now and then a new (weird) sound is thrown at you. Quite a nice song I have to admit, although again it’s nothing really special. At least this is a song that’ll keep you awake, you can really feel the slow building up towards basically nothing. That’s right, “towards basically nothing”, ‘cause in fact the song isn’t building up towards anything at all. Leaving you with a bit of an anticlimax (in my opinion of course). But then again, you even get to hear some mysterious vocal parts; makes the song a bit more worthwhile. Track four is again a long one but basically the same as the third so I’ll leave it at that.

The last track of this album, ‘Nulle Part’, is something different. Right from the beginning of the song you’ll notice that a slightly different approach towards the song has been chosen. The vocals are more gentile and with the addition of an organ (or something like it) the entire song breathes another, less darker, atmosphere. Although nothing has really changed in the long-stretched pattern that all songs contain.

It could be that I don’t get to hear this kind of music very often, fact is, despite all my somewhat negative sayings before, I still dig this album. It’s way different from most mainstream metal acts and I like the fact I can relax and wander off in my mind while listening music. So, if you’re one of those persons as well…you should consider to check out a song of these guys. People into bands like Khoma, will probably dig this stuff too.