Whitehorse / Uboa - The Dissolution of Eternity

Released by: Tartarus Records/ Sweatlung

Release Date: 29.08.25

Running Time: 45:34

Score: Decillion/10

There are times in my life when I wonder if I am good enough. Am I effective in my work and a good partner to Mrs Dark Juan and a decent dogparent? The answer to the last one is a resounding “No” judging by the way Moss behaves. Anyway, you find me in a somewhat introspective frame of mind and doubting my own abilities as a scribe, as well as whether or not I should be apologising to trees for wasting their oxygen. However, they have put up with my rambling for this long, as have the many people who occasionally read my nonsense, for which I am profoundly grateful, but one does get to wondering whether the horse I am flogging snuffed it some time ago or if there is life in the old nag yet…

Enough of this bullshit! I am Dark Juan, and I am a fucking libertine who lives for all the drugs, booze and kinky sex I can lay my hands, mouth and other appendages on or in and I have no time for self-doubt! I am a top notch turbodude and I write things that are different to all the other Rock and Metal scribes because I fucking can and I do not give a single, solitary, flying fuck as to anyone cares or not. It brings me something approximating joy to do this, and that’s something that I can say that a metric fuckton of people on this planet can’t. Who cares if someone reads it or not?

This is what happens when you listen to something that is truly introspective… It gets me thinking and that is never a good idea. People end up injured or worse and I end up waking up somewhere I shouldn’t be, with someone I shouldn’t be with, and covered in the blood of a random person with NO IDEA HOW I FUCKING GOT HERE and then there will be all the tiresome business with the police and explaining to Mrs Dark Juan just why the combined secret services of the UK, Russia and Israel are knocking on the door again.

If you don’t want to start looking inward, then I suggest you do not read any further or listen to the split LP which is currently spinning on the puissant Platter of Splatter ™ from Whitehorse and UBOA. However, if you want some Doom Metal that crawls more slowly than Dark Juan’s morals when faced with a beautiful goth lady, then you might wish to peruse my thoughts below on two hitherto unknown to me bands from Australia…

First to reveal themselves on this split album are Whitehorse. If you want speedy music, you aren’t getting it. On SIXTEEN MINUTE opening track ‘Wringing Life’ Whitehorse set us up on a journey which isn’t as much about music as it is about seismology. The song is a grindingly slow torture session of sound and crushing intensity. Never has a song built so slowly, and to such a ponderous, cataclysmic climax. Nothing is rushed and the whole experience (which, considering its extremely long run time, is NEVER boring, including the part where it was just drums and nothing else) leaves you white, dehydrated and trembling. ‘Wringing Life’ is the very epitome of Doom Metal. The sense of impending disaster never leaves you, your spine quailing before the sheer power before you, and you are utterly powerless to resist as the avalanche of Metal engulfs you. It is the same with (thankfully) shorter second track ‘The Wait’ which increases the speed a tiny notch but is another experience that will leave you utterly fucking horror-stricken in the best possible way. The heaviness defies description without resorting to my usual tropes about Russian female shot-putters and weightlifters. Whitehorse are colossal, biblical and their songs are glacial and slow and move at the speed of continental drift yet have pretty much the same outcome as when continents collide. Either new land is formed, or it all collapses in a catastrophic welter of unstoppable destruction.

After Whitehorse come Uboa, and they are an entirely different proposition to Whitehorse. Uboa play Industrial Doom, and they are also deeply fucking terrifying – even ‘Dreamwalker, Fuck I Miss You’, being something akin to a ballad, has a deep-seated and undeniable blackness around the heart that makes me fear for the life of said Dreamwalker if Uboa get their bloodsoaked hands on her. As if I assumed their gender…

Uboa are also a many faceted band – their first two offerings were ‘Petplay Polycule Open Fire’ and ‘Wasted Potential’ are truly horrific Industrial Doom, all staggering walls of noise and shuddering, massively overamped maschinenklang that is specifically designed to overwhelm the victim before it is dragged off to their lair. The listening experience is not unlike having your bones crushed by North Korean intelligence operatives wielding large sledgehammers. It never stops hurting and the intensity just increases and increases and there is no escape, whereas ‘Pareidolia Shadow’ and ‘The Apocalypse of True Love’ show a more introspective, heartbroken side to Uboa that is shot through with sorrow, but then occasionally gives way to utterly batshit rage. ‘The Apocalypse of True Love’ is a fucking brilliant piece of work which welds together influences from Industrial, Synthwave, New Romanticism, New Wave and Post-Punk into a frankly fucking gorgeous arrangement of influences which have turned Dark Juan into a dribbling, soaked and sated mess on the lounge floor. Mrs Dark Juan is looking at me with distaste.

Again.

I fear my words have not conveyed the sheer hugeness of both Whitehorse and UBOA’s music. They are both massively expansive and stupendously heavy, but in different ways. Whitehorse are the slowest, ponderous, most destructive of super heavy tanks, bronenosters if you will, unstoppable and massive whereas Uboa are the heavy infantry, bristling with missiles and weaponry, covered in blood and viscera, and, although they are the more technical of the two bands here, arguably the more human of the two despite their Industrial roots.

I have to be totally honest, here, this is one of my favourite albums of the year and both Whitehorse and Uboa have totally delivered on the promise that was on the blurb from the PR guys. I fucking LOVE both bands more than beer. And everyone knows how much Dark Juan loves beer. In fact, I think I’ll have one now…

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System is quite stricken by terror after that aural exploration of the darker side of humanity and has no hesitation in awarding Whitehorse and Uboa a decillion/10 for two bands both completing meisterworks on the same album. Fucking stupendous Aussie Doom! Who would have seen that coming?!?

TRACKLISTING:

Wringing Life

The Wait

Petplay Polycule Open Fire

Wasted Potential

Dreamwalker, Fuck I Miss You

Pareidolia Shadow

The Apocalypse of True Love