Change of direction for Deadspace.
Barely a year after their last creation, the Australian band led by Chris Gebauer (vocals, Exitium Sui, Humanitas Error Est, Lebenssucht… ), Herb Bennetts (drums, Woewarden, Aviscerus) and Thomas Major (guitar, Woewarden, Flesh Worship) recruit Aiden Vestgaard (guitare, Doomcave) and Dez Sogutluoglu (bass, Kâbus, Doomcave) to give life to The Dark Enlightenment, their eighth album.
Reptilian Birthright greets us with robotic sampled vocals and an icy atmosphere, but it’s not taking long before the oppressive riffs and growls arrive, first very slowly and then with a hypnotic dimension. We’re caught up in this abyss of darkness, which naturally joins Culminating Chaos, where the rhythm accelerates and lets itself be dominated by an aggressive heady Old School approach, but the sound breaks with a dark bell, and sinks in for a long time. It eventually untangles itself to become sharper again before giving way to In the Vault of Murmur, which anchors itself in thick dissonance in the company of Drew Griffiths (Obed Marsh, Cauldron of Shit, ex-Corpsebitch…), then visceral savagery before blending the two to create controlled chaos before a more soothing but equally disturbing moment. Violence resurfaces with haunting leads, then takes another form on Fanged Noumena, flooding us with its devastating blast and unfathomable riffs that continuously rage while the vocalist pours out his rage with heavy phrasing. Dysgeusia follows with an immediately hostile and screeching approach, almost disturbing in the long run, but the band manages to temporize this pressure with a passage where the rhythm section takes center stage. The dark harmonics quickly return, followed by the vocals, but all the instruments eventually join forces for a final wave of darkness before The Catacosmic Conundrum strikes back with its ominous ambience, followed by full-speed fury. The rhythm is slowed down to let the powerful ranting spill out over us, then chaos takes over the composition before giving way to Into Shadow, the last and longest track, which plunges us back into the darkness to reach this devastated landscape where the screams come back to life between waves of raw riffs that convey the band’s tortured atmosphere right up to the last moment.
While Deadspace have in the past distinguished themselves with a melancholy, heart-rending touch, The Dark Enlightenment offers us a completely different approach, far more aggressive, oppressive and suffocating, in which the musicians leave us little respite and bring us face to face with pure darkness.
95/100
