Orbitoclast - Catharsis

Orbitoclast is a side project of Gjoran Saether, the man behind the solo dark ambient and drone experimental one man band Proteque. He, along side Stein Vegard decided to team up to form this outfit, which released their first album last year, and it's titled Cathatsis. Recorded in an old and closed psychiatric hospitals located in Hjelset, you are to expect a pretty dark album.

However, in terms of quality and entertainment, you can expect not such a good licking in that sense. I like what we're given out of this album; there's a good fifty minutes of dark ambient music inspired with classical touches (such as in Theoretical Feelgood), but the overall album feels just a little too tired and worn.

I mean, the first two take up seventeen minutes, and even though I thought the tracks weren't half bad, I still thought that they were bland and didn't really do much to coerce my attention to the song. Aside from minimal noises, such as metal clinging and some sort of object here or there banging, it was just a bore.

By the time I was done with the fifth track, I felt oddly wanting to get away from this album and wanted to move on. As nice as at least one of the tracks were, which was (again) Theoretical Feelgood, I had half a mind to just put this album to rest as it was doing to myself as I felt the sandman pushing me to sleep due to the not alluring nature of this music.

I can say that if I never heard this kind of music, or anything related t the field, I'm sure I would have found this album to be a bit shocking. However, as it stands, as a man who enjoys listening to dark ambient music as a sort of foundation for study, I can say that this is mediocre at best. Mar 06 2014