Sonic Tyranny Production: 2006
Format: CD

If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you. - Nietzsche

Probably one of the most over used quotes of the century, but absolutely dead-on regarding the latest output from France's Dapnom.

The perpetrator, Meldhkwis, is responsible for a truckload full of cassette releases under several different pseudonyms. A small amount of research will reveal them all. All are worth hearing and each represents a different facet of the artist, but the entity known as Dapnom is my personal favorite.

The problem I have with most "dark ambient" groups is there are just too many to wade through. Every idiot from a Black Metal band and Fruity Loops has an ambient side project. Keyboards have become so cheap that it doesn't take much to acquire one. Most are utter shit, but once in awhile you stumble (or are directed) onto something that is leaps and bounds above the sea of mediocrity.

Label it "ritual ambient", "black ambient" or whatever sub-genre makes you comfortable, Verklärt Nacht is the soundtrack to your nightmares. One track clocking in at just over an hour, it's a mind-bending journey into the darkest recesses of your being. It will take you to those places that the light never sees and forces you to be still. It's a dank, lightless basement. An unknown presence brushes your cheek. Black drones, the mechanisms of hell. To numb to run, to terrified to scream, all you can do is wait for a salvation that never comes. In the end, you are left fetal, spent and barely sane...but stronger for having survived.

One of the best in the genre and a must own.
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