Album art. I like the album art. It’s super reminiscent of early Norwegian BM, calling to mind Darkthrone’s Transylvanian Hunger specifically. The genre-loyal band logo in the top left coupled with the pleasantly stylized album title along the bottom work well with the image of the girl’s face to create an undoubtedly BM impression.

The thunderstorm audio coupled with the piano at the onset of the album is very pleasant from the first note and gets even better when the guitar finally enters around the minute mark, by which point, the “postness” of the album is fairly apparent. There’s an interesting break after the initial thunder track, 2:18AM, following which one would expect the piano to step away – at least for a little while – but it returns immediately after the break, albeit in a lesser role, and is joined by some more traditionally BM sounding riffing, some plainly post-BM drum work (that is pleasantly simple), and some EXCELLENT vocals that I like quite a lot. These vocals are around the same pitch as more traditional BM, but lack a certain shrillness(?), a trait that makes Sebastian’s vocals VERY enjoyable for me.

After the run of 2:18AM and Dysthymia, the subgenre of the album is unquestionable and Indifference continues to support this stylism with some interesting “human noise” backing. The bass drum tone is also an interesting one that, when mated with the bass guitar, has a sort of hollow quality about it not dissimilar to the bass drum in a pipe and drum corps, which I think is pretty neat. Our Last Gleam of Hope begins around the 15 minute mark and offers chugging bass drum paired with piano accents and solid ambient backing go great with Sebastian’s awesome vocals and is one of the faster tracks on the album. As one nears the end of the album, it’s become apparent that track breaks are a point of contention for Alldrig: they’re all strikingly abrupt and come at a time that flaunts conventional musical wisdom. This is by no means a bad thing and is actually pretty neat in that it sort of serves as a wake-up call to the listener that a new track is about to begin, which can be less than easy to discern on an album as ambient as this. As the original tracking comes to a close, there’s a pleasant and satisfying bookend effect provided by the return of the thunderstorm backing that works well with what could possibly be the most creative drumming on the album. As the album draws to a close, the last two original tracks offer some last minute morsels to really enjoy. All We Left Behind is less ambient in nature than most of the album, features solid dualistic lyricism combines with some refreshing high guitar work to set this track apart from the rest, both auditorily and formally. Somewhere Along our Lives is also quite interesting with what I found to me the most creative drumming of the album and best use of ambient tracking in conjunction with instruments.

To wrap up the album, there’s a cover of Lifelover’s Cancertid (which I listened to after a short break to get a feel for the album’s original content). It’s certainly a little more upbeat in sound than the rest of the album, but the same sort of chugalug drumming and awesome vocals continue. Ultimately, it’s fairly loyal to Lifelover’s rendition, but I prefer Alldrig’s vocals, if I’m being 100% honest.

Overall, I’d say that this offering from Alldrig is a very solid and at times quite interesting [ambient] post-BM album that’s only sins are being a little monotonous and offering slightly under-produced vocals at some spots, for which I think Sebastian makes up for (at least a little) with his fantastic vocals and otherwise solid mixing decisions.

Formed in 2014, one-man post-black metal band Alldrig already has three releases to its name and "Introspective Existentialism", a meditation on human existence and its purpose, is its second album and most recent recording to date. "Introspective Existentialism" makes no claim to having the answers to issues and problems of existence, and the album is best seen as a catalyst for recalling and perhaps purging of negative memories and experiences in listeners' individual lives. No two people will come away from the album feeling and thinking the same way about it.

The music is mostly instrumental with vocals used more as an additional layer of sonic texture and to help evoke particular moods, memories and associations. Piano, voice and tremolo guitars dominate the music which often goes off on unexpected tangents of rhythm, melody and riffing, often repeating in irregular ways, but tracks generally have their own identities with respect to melody and mood. "Melancholy Germ I" is a harsh piece of acid guitar rain, shrieking ghost voices and a sickly nauseous mood with solo piano picking its way through. By contrast, "Winter Lullaby" is a gentle slumbering track of rising and falling piano melody with soft percussion and delicate effects - though there is still uncertainty and foreboding hovering over it. The very last track is a brooding soundscape of beach-wave field recordings and ambient tones forming (or trying to form) melody fragments.

There is a lot of repetition in all tracks and some are more monotonous and dreary than others. Sometimes the one-finger piano workout is so pained and depressed that I can't wait for the track to finish fast enough or for the keyboarding to toddle off and hang itself. The longer the album continues, the more maddening the piano becomes: it's so bland and lacking in feel that it becomes more annoying than depressive. (Although the blankness does mirror the blankness a depressed person can feel ... listeners can decide for themselves whether it adds or detracts from the music.) The percussion is no great shakes either in sound or in delivery (it just keeps time) and on some pieces like "Winter Lullaby" could have been left off entirely.

The concept behind the album is interesting - it probably needs more feel and emotion in the piano playing. On some tracks, the synth percussion tends to hurry the music along when perhaps the music could do without it, to be slower and more flowing, and to draw and absorb the listener more fully. The production isn't very good - the album was recorded over 2 days at home - but it does give the recording that necessary nauseous and enervated feeling, the sort of feeling you have when you wake up and the day ahead is yawning like another bottomless pit that you have to crawl through.

Probably one album listeners won't want to hear too often but only when they are feeling really bad and need something to remind them that they're not alone in feeling the way they do and other people have felt the same way and even worse.