The new Bunkur goes nowhere and does nothing. But for what it is, it’s one of the best, if not the best, album in its genre.

We’re talking doooooom. We’d add more Os, but it would screw up our neat paragraph format. Suffice to say that Nullify is the kind of record that’s like the lingering after effect of getting hit in the gut, and that lasts for more than an hour.

One track, 66 minutes. The only cuteness found is how the band put in a sample at the beginning of the record of a locomotive going choo-choo, which the vocals accompany as if it were the cry of a train from hell. That’s the funeral doom version of adorable. The rest is uber slow, super despondent, and hangs around in permanence like the mood in a crypt at night. If there are any chord progressions, they are so spread out that it makes them null and void. It seems there are no guitars on this album, only basses, analog synths, and drums, mostly featuring a tom-tom and a kick drum, with a bit of crash and ride for variety.

If you’re a metal fan, and a doom one at that, you’ve certainly encountered albums like Nullify before. But what makes this Bunkur album at the top of its class is the production. It’s heavy and sinister, but its aim is not to bludgeon you with repeated power chords played deliberately with a hard crash and kick shoved down your throat (take Esoteric’s Maniacal Vale as but one example), but rather to weave a misty pall that is as delicate as it is heavy and deathlike. Imagine if Bohren Und Der Club of Gore made a funeral doom album while its saxophone player was on vacation, and got a doom screamer, and you’ve got Nullify.

While the specific and unusually mystifying, meditative effect of this album makes it unique in its genre, the nature of the music ironically makes Nullify simultaneously artistically fascinating, yet musically boring. Again, nothing happens. Beyond the introductory five or so minutes, culminating with the train sample, Nullify hits a "climax" that lasts about 59 minutes, and then the album is over, and damned if anyone will know how that stretch of time actually goes.

However, if looking at this album as a piece of sonic (not musical) art, it is eminently worthy — the kind of thing to have an awesome black trance-out session to. While you listen to Nullify, you can unfold the attractive heavy matte stock booklet and try to decipher what the hell is written in there. It’ll keep you busy.

If you’re going to have just one dead boring funeral doom album in your collection, let this one be it. Nullify is as relaxing as it is crushing, as meditative as it is sinister, and yes, it goes nowhere. (8/10)