Eldritch - Innervoid - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Eldritch's latest masterpiece is easily their best effort ever. Hard to believe, given the exquisite quality of the entire back catalogue; nonetheless, this unique mixture of early progressive rock elements and modern metal sounds - with hints of AOR, thrash, classic and electronic music - is simply irresistible. Album Tracks 1. Dead Blossom (Intro) 2. Failure of Faith 3. The Cry of a Nation 4. Circles 5. No Obscurity 6. Sunken Dreams 7. Fear Me 8. I Can't Believe It 9. The Awful Closure 10. Eos 11. Runaway (Bon Jovi Cover)

After some silence since their magnificent demo, Dead Void return from the depths to bestow a crushing debut album-Volatile Forms-upon the world. Drawing in on doomy, yet certainly not meek, atmospherics-the sheer monstrous tone of which will pin one to the wall-it is clear this is something unwieldy. Murmuring bass seeps through buzzing guitars in a manner that sounds profoundly unwelcoming, while the daunting vocals and crashing drums give no alleviation from the bludgeoning force. While the hostile and claustrophobic sounds of this record cannot be ignored, equally impactful are the grooves which hit like a hammer of pure malice when carefully spliced with the caverns of eerily contorting death metal. When the pounding drums break through the guitars, they have a real hard tone, while the seeping filth of the strings is not overshadowed. Clearly the three demos and spacing between them have allowed the band to develop into the best version of themselves, as on this debut album one hears a refined but unpolished and inhospitable cut of truly awesome music taking form.Moving forth, the hooks, the grooves, the expanses of doom and desolation, all conjure something inescapable and dread-tinged while the malignant hammering of pure old school violence is not lost or forgotten, as warped riffs and blast-beats meet gutturally-spewed vocals and occasional lead oddities. Contrasting often nuanced moments with an assault of bestial ferocity, there is no predictability or obvious pattern, rather a chaotic and honest approach to all of the songs. These tracks move in a lumbering fashion with organically composed structures while not feeling formulaic or running-in-circles with the same idea. Dead Void fantastically curate their most vile elements into a cohesive and ultimately expansive experience that takes the promise shown on the demos to unfathomable new heights. This is n

Over the course of their first two albums, Cosmovore and Providence, Ulthar carved out a unique niche on the spectrum of underground metal, forging a grotesquely elegant hybrid of technical death metal alchemy and black metal's stinging blizzard winds, all with the acerbic color of the absurdist's brush. Nearly three years on from Providence, a burst of deadly creativity has resulted in two new albums, to be released simultaneously. Where it's sister album Anthronomicon presents an eight-piece puzzle of labyrinthine tumult, Helionomicon takes those elements and creates two towering twenty minute monoliths of radiant avant-garde immensity. Each track, appropriately titled InchHelionomiconInch and InchAnthronomicon,Inch transports the listener on a vast journey of psycho-cerebral spectacle where hitherto unimagined landscapes take shape and strange intangible structures pierce the disintegrating firmament. Despite the substantial length of these two tracks, it's never a tedious ride; each visits countless new vistas and perspectives across time. In essence Helionomicon becomes a synthesis of all Ulthar's recorded output to this point across two climactic, ambitious epics.Having reached albums three and four concurrently, and having many other bands and albums under their collective belts, the three seasoned players that comprise Ulthar have not been content to play things straightforward, to be just another death metal band among thousands. Rather the band continuously seeks and executes with more compulsive complexity, more nuance and in pursuit of a persistent ascension to a transcendent and incongruous world beyond the mundane; a place of euphoric exultation and bewildering awe. Album Tracks 1. Helionomicon 2. Anthronomicon