Review by Dominik on July 26, 2026.

It's now nearly ten years since the German black metallers Ultha released their masterpiece "Converging Sins". An album that, despite its lengthy songs, combined majestic compositions and impressive musicianship into a black metal maelstrom of emotions. It was epic, melancholic, aggressive, yet it never tumbled into the abysmal depths of depressive black metal. Everything that followed relied on a very similar formula, unfortunately without ever reaching the heights of their 2016 peak. Now enter me, myself and I: someone who, against all better judgement, stubbornly clings to the hope that every great band will eventually resurface and deliver a second masterpiece. A hopeless optimist, sometimes masquerading as a cynic. I know it never really worked out for the early giants of thrash. And I can't think of many black metal bands that managed to equal a genuine 90+ album once they'd already written one. Still, hope is a disease with no known cure, and as I intend to die long after hope itself has already packed its bags, I approached "A Light So Dim" with exactly the same enthusiasm and excitement of a child unwrapping Christmas presents.

I was blown away. By frustration. By a loud and heartfelt "What the flying fuck happened here?" I'm not what people usually call a fanboy, but I fully understand if parts of this review read like the desperate rant of someone trying to process the fact that one of the brighter stars in his favorite niche suddenly decided that living up to the album title was an artistic direction. Ultha used to play black metal. Large parts of "A Light So Dim" don't. I'd estimate that around eighty percent of this record had me wondering whether it would still qualify for publication on the Metal Archives. Time and again the album tricks you into believing that yet another passage of acoustic guitar picking, ambient murmuring, keyboards and clean vocals merely serves as the calm before the next black metal storm. That illusion only works for so long. Let me elaborate.

The album actually starts on a promising note. An intro which seemingly was designed to remind you where the skip button is leads into "Love As We're Falling Down", a genuine gem. Here Ultha wastes no time flattening the listener with an overwhelming wall of sound. Massive blast beats meet desperate riffing and urgent keyboards, supported by the vocalist who somehow shifts effortlessly between anguished shrieks, harsher growls, and desperate shouting. He manages to sound angry, hopeless and utterly possessed all at once. Those first three minutes had me grinning like an idiot. Is this finally it? Maybe this really was going to be "that" album. Mid-song, we're faced with a hard stop and the introductory motif is carried along by stomping mid-tempo. No surprise for me, as I've spent enough time with Ultha.

What follows, with two notable exceptions I'll come to shortly, left me wondering whether I had fundamentally misunderstood the artistic concept behind this album. Judging from information available, "A Light So Dim" revolves around hope in the darkest of times. That's a perfectly fitting concept for black metal. It could have resulted in something dramatic, accusatory, or emotionally devastating. Instead, the album repeatedly dissolves into a mixture of watered-down Black Sabbath worship (I may suffer from acoustic hallucinations and got this completely wrong), endless acoustic passages, layers of keyboards, hints of goth, darkwave, and whatever else people who wear more eyeliner than corpse paint call music these days.

"Her Still Singing Limbs" was where my mood started to pivot. Eleven minutes of harmless guitar plucking and timid drumming pass by while the vocalist appears to be the only band member still interested in creating any sense of urgency and impact. "What's Yours Is Yours To Carry" is even more confusing. It opens like an old electronic music sample before introducing an undeniably gifted female singer. Back on "Converging Sins", "Mirrors in a Black Room" featured a duet between harsh black metal vocals and a female voice that somehow managed to become something close to a black metal ballad. And I swear I mean that as praise. Here, however, it simply drifts by like two people trying to musically process their midlife crisis while heavily medicated. Beautifully sung, yes. Memorable? Unfortunately not. The song is so drained of momentum that I was contemplating whether I should apologize to my speakers for putting them through it.

Just as I was about to lose all hope, "Hex Upon Our Heads" finally arrives. Four glorious minutes. The opening riff wouldn't have sounded out of place on Neurosis' album "Souls at Zero". For a brief moment, the song even suggests Ultha might suddenly turn into a death metal band before retreating back into safer territory. Finally, impact meets speed. Urgency meets aggression. Most importantly, metal finally remembers it was invited to this album. It is sad that even this highlight cannot keep its momentum until the end. And that's what frustrates me most. Nearly every song contains fragments that remind me why I fell in love with Ultha in the first place and the band became a respected name in modern (atmospheric) black metal. A fantastic riff here. An explosive outburst there. A memorable melody somewhere else. Here they simply refuse to exist in the same song.

One final ray of hope shines through "Pink Lights Soiling To Copper". The drumming almost feels industrial, as though Ministry had decided to record a black metal song. The keyboards dominate most of the arrangement but, for once, actually enhance rather than suffocate the atmosphere. The guitars occasionally surface just long enough to remind everyone that we're listening to metal. However, what truly gives the song character is once again the vocalist, who is working his way through an impressive repertoire of growls, desperate shouts, tortured screams and venomous accusations. At least he is carrying the emotional weight that the instrumentation often seems reluctant to match.

The album closes by leaving me scratching my head more than banging it. "To Part The Abelia Springs" feels like one last alibi allowing us to stretch our imagination just enough to continue calling this a black metal record. The drummer happily blasts away at several points, yet it feels strangely disconnected because the aggression underneath simply isn't there. Once more the vocals manage to rescue individual passages, but by then I'd already reached one unavoidable conclusion: "A Light So Dim" will be my last blind purchase from Ultha.

Writing this review hurt far more than I expected, because I genuinely like these guys. Perhaps the problem isn't Ultha. Perhaps I'm simply no longer part of the target audience. I understand that artists evolve, and listeners don't always follow. And that's perfectly fine. I still hope this turns out to be Ultha's equivalent of Winterfylleth's "The Hallowing of Heirdom": a stylistic detour before returning stronger than ever and rediscovering the path that made me become a diehard fan in the first place. Until then, I'll keep "Converging Sins" spinning, not because I'm trapped in the past, but because sometimes the past simply riffs harder.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10, because every few minutes "A Light So Dim" reminds me that the old Ultha is still alive somewhere beneath the ambience, acoustics, and melancholy. Unfortunately, someone appears to have buried them before the recording sessions began.