(written by Islander)
The Polish metal band Supreme Void is a new outfit, but with a lineup that includes previous membership in such groups as Sphere, Bloodsoaked, Mesmerized, and Cancerfaust. What brought this trio together was a desire to make death metal that delivers an intense sensory experience, one that’s “striking, relentless, and deeply disturbing.” To do that, they drew inspiration from Ulcerate and Gorguts, and the results are revealed in their debut album Towards Oblivion, which will be released on April 25th by the French label Dolorem Records.
To help spread the word about this full-length debut, today we’re premiering the song “Dissolution of Power“. But before we get to that, we want to comment about the first song released from the album, “Remnants of Hope“.
It’s fair to call this song a bold opening statement of intent. Over the course of a bit more than 7 minutes, it provides a changing collage of viscerally potent and mind-warping sensations. It opens with dissonantly ringing riffage that creates a dismal and distressing mood, but it also brutish jolts. It follows that with fusillades of percussive clobbering and fretwork paroxysms that channel derangement — still eerily ringing but also viciously gouging.
As the words come forth in gruesome growls and rabid howls, the guitars rapidly dart in strange angles, swarm in frenzies, and feverishly squeal, while the drumwork proves to be equally agile and adventurous.
But the song is 7 minutes long, and so the band have still more room to vary their madness, slowing the pace and causing the guitars to abysmally whine, elevating the vocals to strangled screams, pounding like sledgehammers, blasting like machine-guns, and creating further high-speed convulsions of dissonance and dementia (nicely separated between the channels so you can take in the individual lunacy of each guitar).
Near the end, the guitars strangely quiver and sizzle, creating an alien and disturbing atmosphere, even as the bass vividly murmurs and throbs.
And now let’s turn to the song we’re premiering today.
“Dissolution of Power” again displays the band’s penchant for interweaving unsettling guitar maneuvers and tones, creating an unnerving amalgam of clarity and abrasion, of misery and despair. Once again, dissonance rules the day, and the music also displays a lot of intricacy and technical prowess, not “showing off” for its own sake but as a means of capturing mental and emotional fracturing — and keeping listeners off-balance.
And while that’s all head-spinning and eye-popping (including the unpredictable percussive adventures and lots of fast tempo changes), the band also inflict blows of pulverizing heaviness and again discharge the words like a cavalcade of beasts.
As in the first song, this one includes a less riotous but still scary interlude, paving the way for a maniacal solo, another interesting bass performance, and tremolo’d swarms of ravenous viciousness — with a spiraling, wailing, and eye-popping guitar solo still to come that turns the song into an exhilarating spectacle.
And one more thing becomes apparent from both of these songs: As dissonant, demented, and unpredictably varying as the guitar work is, they include mangled motifs that reappear and turn out to be “catchy” — strange hooks, but hooks nevertheless.
And so Dolorem Records is correct in summing up the album as one that creates “an atmosphere of sublime brutality while exploring complex structures that impress with their sophistication”, a “raw and innovative” album of “technical and avant-garde death metal.”
SUPREME VOID is:
Exile – Vocals & Guitars
Ravager – Guitars
Cyklon – Drums
Towards Oblivion includes 6 tracks of brutal, dissonant, and technical death metal with a total running time of 39+ minutes. It was mixed and mastered by Scott Elliott at Chernobyl Audio, and that transfixing cover art way up above is the creation of Michal “Xaay” Loranc.
Dolorem Records is offering the album on CD with a 12-page booklet that includes all the lyrics, as well as digitally. It’s recommended for fans of Ulcerate, Gorguts, and Hate.
PRE-ORDER:
https://bit.ly/3QzFFRG
https://doloremrecords.bandcamp.com/album/towards-oblivion
SUPREME VOID:
https://www.facebook.com/supremevoid
https://www.instagram.com/Supremevoid_official
https://supremevoid.bandcamp.com/