UNTIL DEATH OVERTAKES ME
Prelude to monolith

Missing. What if the searchers falter, pass away? When none are left that hope to find even something to bury, to mourn.
To be missing, to be never found. To never return, and fade away in the shadows of time. To become forgotten beyond all hope of recovery.

Until Death Overtakes Me's 2018 album contains over one hour of mournful funeral doom mixed with orchestral ambient. Missing, named after the song from Until Death Overtakes Me's earlier years, continues the story of that old epic. In four tracks the concepts of loss and being lost are explored.

There's the tragedy on a personal level, of searchers that fail, grow old and find no closure. Of the one lost, stuck in nothingness, wanting to be found. But tragedy grows, touches all, and the music becomes the soundtrack to the funeral of mankind. Empty tones drifting over the desolation, echoing through empty canyons. All the searchers have gone, all those missing are forgotten. There's no one left to remember, there's no hope left.
And when the proof and all remembrance of our existence is gone too, then have we truly been here at all? We're already missing.

Through 4 tracks mixing funeral doom with ambient and darkwave, Until Death Overtakes Me explores the idea of life being incomplete unless it passes death's threshold.
Antemortem (before death) is not a glorification of death, but focusses on the path to it. Life with its pains and terrors might long for the end, but could just as well explore the freedom that comes with accepting the inevitable.
The contrast between heavy distorted guitars and ethereal ambient melodies mirrors life, but offers an open ending - is life a pained struggle, where one is shoved forwards, closer to death all the time, forcing one to blindly squeeze as much meaning out of every moment, or is it rather a calm stream that gently carries one to the completion of a journey that's best experienced with eyes wide open, regardless of what may come after? More likely, both aspects remain at play : primal instincts balanced by intelligent rationality.

Antemortem is the first Until Death Overtakes Me album after a long hiatus, and forms a bridge between the periods before and after this break.
The track 'Before' dates back to late 2003, 'Days Without Hope' is based on a track that's even older by several years, and best marks the point in time where Until Death Overtakes Me went from darkwave/doom to ambient funeral doom. On the other hand there are the tracks 'The Wait' and 'Inevitability', both from 2016. 'The Wait' is more a experimental, almost mechanical sounding epic, while 'Inevitability' is an instrumental marking the acceptance of the concept of 'Antemortem', as well as its conclusion.