Review by Michael on April 21, 2024.

German Sci-Fi black metal entity Vorga is here to explore the outer space with us for the second time. So please enter the spaceship and let's lift off. But beware, this isn't going to be a soap opera with nice Tribbles or even with some malevolent aliens who are lurking in the horsehead nebula to extinct mankind. No, this is more or less a desperate trip into the nothingness and to explore the tragic and maybe senseless existence of the human race.

The cover describes perfect what we can find musically on Beyond The Palest Star. Beauty but nothing that gives you shelter or hope. The slight futuristic blackish stuff Vorga perform on their second full-length is full of melancholic and desperate melodies that let you literally feel the nothingness around you. The whole album is like a long search on which you will never find the answer. Or to stay in outer space, like a probe that flies from solar system to solar system, scanning each planet and its satellites to find alien life only to resign and exit the system without a positive result: the songs are very intense, in many single parts kind of persisting and challenging but then suddenly explode and accelerate onto warp 10 again. Stylistically Vorga aren't too far away from their countrymen The Spirit (thematically and musically) and this of course implies some similarities to Dissection of course, too. But while The Spirit are more minimalistic when it comes to sound effects, Vorga often use some freaky spaced keyboard sounds to give their songs some more depth and attraction and so they remind me here and there a little bit of very old The Covenant back to “Nexus Polaris”. Also the guitar solos (like in 'Magical Thinking') underline the desperation of the album. Repetitive and in minor, this isn't anything to build you up, this is more something to drag you down. The tremolo picking in this song catches up with this, too. Nothingness, meaningless existence – what a fantastic oxymoron to the title 'Magical Thinking'. With 'Tragic Humanity' (yeah, another positive aspect on the album) they created a very epic one. Some mid-tempo melodies that are kind of cinematic and rousing are combined with many keyboard tunes. Here and there are ferocious, icy black metal outbursts but it never turns out into a black metal onslaught. This is a highly melodic track that stresses out the tragic we all have to suffer in a very vivid way. Having arrived (or not) at the end of our journey, we are docking at the 'Terminal' which attracts of its almost classical arrangements at the beginning and the very dense and futuristic atmosphere in its progress. Again a lot of keyboards are used to create this atmosphere and this one is for sure another highlight of the album. Not like a lot of other bands they put a slight generic track at the end of the album and fortunately this one didn't turn out like the soundtrack to that boring movie with Tom Hanks, no this one make you want to hear more by Vorga.

Although our search for answers wasn't successful and there is nothing to be found, not even beyond the palest star, we will start exploring again. And this time in the third dimension (or on Vorga third album which hopefully won't take too long to be released).

Rating: 9.5 out of 10 deadly voids