Aggressive music (for want of a better term) seems to rush forward, not just because time is moving forward as the music plays out but because the music itself seems violently to surge at the listener. In the case of extreme metal there’s a reason why we say (ad nauseum) that a band has “assaulted” us or has been “unleashed”. It’s because the music sounds like we’re the target of an attack.
In the case of Ethereal Void song we’re premiering today, the attack is particularly vicious, and it sounds like they have an imminent deadline for finishing us off — no time to waste, no chance for escape. And yet the music also moves… sideways… as if diverting us from the danger, or even seducing us into its embrace.
Ethereal Void‘s members (some of whom share time in The Design Abstract) may waste time in their personal lives (who doesn’t?), but their music sure as hell doesn’t waste time. On their new album Gods of a Dead World most of the nine songs do their work in less than three minutes, though the band close with a title track that nearly reaches six minutes. Yet as “The Voiceless” demonstrates, the band add a lot of flair to these compact compositions.
As previewed above, “The Voiceless” is a rushing charge. It gets the listener’s pulse pumping because the song itself has such a mad pulse. Many of them actually, from the fast jolts in the fuzzed-out riffage to the die-stamp hammering of the snare and the jackhammer impact of the bass. And it does sound like a mad pulse, thanks to the swarms of frantic tremelo’ed fretwork, the relentless double-bass strafing, and the ugly ravenous growls.
While the head-hooking energy of those assaulting ingredients never really lets go, the music does also move sideways. Eerie spectral tones ring out, creating an overlay of melancholy. The music even seems to elevate in wailing splendor, as a prelude to a sorcerous guitar solo that sounds both inviting and yearning, both enticing in its glimmering tones and downcast in its mood. Even the unhinged screams of the vocalist almost sound like singing (almost).
This Ontario-based death metal band tell us that “conceptually, this song is about a mass exodus of people from another realm, silently venturing onward to an unfathomable destination.” Over the album as a whole, “There is a constant-running sub-theme of the futility and violence of warfare”.
Gods of a Dead World is now set for release by on May 26th by Abstrakted Records, which recommends it for fans of Gojira, Septicflesh, and of course The Design Abstract. For more info, check the links below — and be sure to check out the previously released lyric video for the album track “Seeds of Hatred“.
https://design.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/EtherealVoid