“We are corpses; walking dead...we are ghosts in the supermarkets of life.” The accompanying notes for 'The Eye of Time' refer directly to the anger, shame, resignation and hopelessness that drives individual tracks; a recurring theme is that we are doomed by our narrow self-interest. It's a bold move for a largely wordless project; ambient works tend to be more abstract or vague in sentiment, valuing maximum scope for individual interpretation.

The whole 2 CD package of 'The Eye of Time' is the distillation of six years' toil from Marc Euvrie. Originally moving in French metal and hardcore circles, he applies that disaffection to classical instrumentation and electronic programming in composing a dystopian deathscape. The breadth of content here is a mammoth undertaking: forlorn cello and piano dirges, drum and bass, drone metal, noise, loops and samples. Unyielding in the use of minor keys, Euvrie's crosshairs are trained directly on your left ventricle; for all the abounding nastiness, almost everything possesses a tonal heart. In this sense, once I'm a few tracks in, I know there are going to be few surprises melodically; the adventure here is in how the delicate, desolate threads are repeatedly stretched, frayed and distorted into all-consuming cacophony on a grand scale. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria.

Disc 1, 'After Us' could easily have been a mess, but the thick black treacle of misery and despair holds it all together a treat. The opening gambit is the ticking of a clock leading into a gothic brass funeral march; that will set the stall out nicely then! Shadows quickly fall upon the initial stridency of 'I Hate Your Fucking Eyes' ,with its booming brass and incisive beats. Poisoned, prologned notes and a distorted female vocal stain it with anxiety. 'My hate is a gun, see the smile on my face' is redolent of DJ Shadow's 'Organ Donor', splattering breaks over a possessed church organ long since abandoned by the godly. I can overlook the ponderous literalism of track titles like 'Don't cry little child, don't watch your future life, you won't survive it...don't look down!' as 'After Us' makes the end of humanity sound grimly fascinating as well as tragic. A man wails inconsolably below all manner of disfigured drones and Autechre-meets-John Carpenter bad trip psych. Weeds bursting from office windows, dust clouds and enormous rats huddled in the footwells of burnt out buses. Stick it on a loud system in a damp basement; I'll be there, sometimes stood in the corner gurning at noise, sometimes dancing like a loon.

I see the second disc as a more variegated exhibit of Euvrie's talents (it is conceptually divided into two parts: 'Jail' and 'Lily on the Valley'; I'm unsure where the divide comes). While the tone remains in shade, there are moments of both levity and animation. It starts in camp macabre style with a swinging jazz sample that would befit Mr Scruff. Then it's back to business as usual on 'Time Has Come', featuring a teutonic choir and a one-note panzer riff riding slipshod through the cemetery. 'The distance between you and the rest's heartbreaking strings and keys are innervated by a jagged guitar arpeggio right on the edge of dissolution, along with tribal rhythms. This and 'Comfort, design and graves' (complete with gruff Scott Kelly-ish growls) are stunning highlights which ignite, collapse and reform before yer very ears. Stepping up a gear into crackling hardcore breakbeat on 'Begin,wait, watch, play' and 'Use your wings for what they are', it's clear that this is no object in navel gazing; these songs would be brutal in a live setting.

All the work was worth it. 'The Eye of Time' pulls no punches and leaves nothing to chance; it's a compelling journey through our earthly hell.