Nothingness is releasing its second album.
Formed in the United States in 2018, the band featuring Barclay Olson (vocals), Jonny Grandel (guitar), Ben Hartzell (bass), Alex Walstad (guitar, Aberration) and Jason Hirt (drums, Ghost Bath) has announced their signing with Everlasting Spew Records for the release of Supraliminal.
The band also called upon DgS (Aberration, Silurian, Suffering Hour) on vocals and YhA (Derizion, Merihem, Suffering Hour) on guitar.
Curse of Creation, the first track, immediately reveals the extreme dissonant sounds the band develops with some mastery, coupled with a heavy sound and massive screams. The jerky rhythm slows down to become oppressive and dark, then the sound explodes again before letting chaotic leads drop on Horrendous Incantation, a composition which also mixes technicality and raw rage on a rhythmic basis. The band also adds Black Metal or even Sludge influences for some crushing parts while staying on its dissonant basis that we find on the complex Catapulted Into Hyperspace and its sharp speed. Despite the riffs’ impressive technicality, the band makes the track very heavy and heady while integrating aggressive screams and strange leads before driving us to Temple of Broken Swords, a quite mysterious composition. The track regularly explodes while placing some catchy melodies in its unstable raw basis, then Festering Abstraction offers us a few seconds of respite before gradually returning to a slow and crushing heaviness, then it flares up again. Some Hardcore-rooted choirs join the raw strength before the short Inviolate Viscera puts its rage and dissonance, followed by Beacon of Loss, the longest composition, which drowns us under its dark dissonance before letting a worked Death Metal accompany it. The band returns to massive, crushing and very regular sounds on The Anvil, an extremely effective and jerky track which perfectly matches the unleashed screams, then the album ends with Decimation Mechanism, a composition letting ominous cosmic sounds lead us to ever so complex and effective riffs.
Nothingness mixes a great amount of influences to cultivate its sonic aggression in all forms. Although rooted in dissonant Death Metal, Supraliminal is a rich and powerful album which will be seductive and disturbing.
80/100