(Guest writer Booker returns to NCS after an extended hiatus with this review of the new album by Intervoid from the wilds of northeast Ohio.)

There are those who follow, and then there are those who take another path. We probably all like to think that the world of metal is made up of people who fit into the latter group. Maybe you like to think you’re part of that group, too, and that this bent in your character has made you take the red pill and set in motion a series of events that has led you, inexorably, here. But there’s an even more extreme group who throw all semblance of caution to the wind, raise middle fingers to the gods, and have the temerity to… release an album in December.

I can hear you screaming in disbelief, “Who would do such a thing?!”. Yes, who would… who would violate the sacred sanctity of the year-end list, which now has spread into November like an out-of-control blob consuming ever more months in an ever-increasing race to be first. Maybe these people know something we don’t? Maybe they’ve just got better things to do than to schedule their musical creations around the whims of the internet metal nerds? I have another idea – they are not human. And this brings us to Intervoid, whose debut LP just dropped as a late-breaking treat to top off the year. Continue reading »