(Here’s Alex Atkinson‘s review of a new EP by California-based VoidCeremony that was recently fired into the void by 20 Buck Spin.)
California’s tech-death monstrosity VoidCeremony have given us a quaint dose of things to come with their three-track cassette release At the Periphery of Human Realms. I usually steer away from tech-death, but something about these four members’ ability to navigate a song like a rabid Cujo always pulls me in. Their all-star crew, pulling from such heavyweights as Incantation, Stargazer, and Atramentus to name a few, should be enough to get even the most annoying dingleberry a-twinkling.
For anyone who lives under a rock and has not heard VoidCeremony’s debut LP Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel, check out NCS’s review back in July of 2020 and listen to it as soon as possible. It is like falling into a waking manic nightmare.
The first track on their latest teaser, “Entropic Reflections Continuum” (not to be confused with the title of their LP), doesn’t waste any time showing off the band’s technical, yet brutal compositions. Bassist Damon Good continues to shine on these tracks, using complex bass chord structures to accent the manic riffs of guitarists Garrett Johnson and Phil Tougas. Melodically, the song has a more sinister tone than much of what we heard from the debut LP and I am here for it. There’s touches of Death influence during the second half of the song’s solo, but the comparison seems so redundant in the genre at this point, is it even worthwhile calling out? Leading up to the final blasting sequence, the song comes to an apocalyptic conclusion that sounds more cohesive than the rest of the crazed fit contained in the first four and a half minutes. It’s like the band wanted to provide awful familiarity after causing such calamity.
The second track is a forgettable minute and half long ethereal trip as we transition to the third track, “Tenebrous Lucidity”. The song opens with a huge riff accented once again by Damon Good’s bass, which sounds like a luciferian church bell chiming amongst the flames. The almost three minute long track suffers a bit at the end, as it feels incomplete. As if all the twists and turns throughout the track didn’t provide enough carnage as is. According to the Bandcamp page, this track most likely will not see the light of day on any other release, so if you are hounding for something to hold you over until the follow-up album, get a hold of this release.
(Released on January 6, 2022, cassette and digital.)
BANDCAMP:
https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/at-the-periphery-of-human-realms
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/VoidCeremony