Utter Failure
Life Has No More Meaning

If you believe that the debut album by American duo Utter Failure, called Life Has No More Meaning, is an uplifting and upbeat album you are quite mistaken. Don’t let the name fool you, it is a black metal album about sorrow and suicide, self-loathing and other things like that. Pretty uplifting subject matter though, or maybe not – but is it any good? Or does it make you want to perform hara-kiri?

It is black metal of the depressive kind, dark, moody, the vocals are growly in a desperate kind of way. If you can make out what the singer is singing about, you’ll not that it is themes that I touched on in the first paragraph. I don’t know if I like the vocals, I like the mood but not the way of singing – if that makes sense. Otherwise, the production is fresh and good, something not commonly expressed about a genre that mostly gives us depressingly bad albums. The variation is also, contrary to the genre standards, quite good. Sensible playing time with the five tracks requiring about forty minutes to be played.

I find this album to be rather appealing, I don’t quite like the vocals, but the moods, atmospheres, those things are great. I don’t find anything that really stands out, but it works well throughout, and it feels like an album that was to some extent worthwhile, which is more than you can say about much that I listen to nowadays. I like the emotional resonance and the moods; it is an album that I believe can be appealing to a decent sized audience.

So, it can certainly be worth checking out this album, but don’t let the title fool you into believing that it is an upbeat thing because then you might not like it. But if you are into the moody dark weaves of atmospheric black metal it can certainly be more than worth your while.

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