Description

Hailing from the resurgent Dutch black metal scene, the then-mysterious DEATHLESS VOID made their public debut with a self-titled EP in early 2022, released by IRON BONEHEAD. Across its three-song / 15-minute runtime was a vacuum of violent, post-modern death energy. Their foundation was undoubtedly black metal, but their vision was not blinkered by the past; if anything, the jet-stream of crushing chaos across Deathless Void was futuristic, albeit a ruined vision of such.

Reprising two of those EP tracks, The Voluptuous Fire of Sin becomes the penultimate first statement from DEATHLESS VOID. Much of that foundation is fortunately still in place – palpitating physicality mutated into cold, cutting, gleaming-yet-bloodstained steel – but the now-quartet have excised some of the noisier crags of that EP in favor of a more organic soundfield, which exceptionally amplifies the latent nightsky melodicism of their black metal. In terms of that EP, one could point to later Katharsis or Antaeus or especially turn-of-the-millennium Thorns as touchstones; on The Voluptuous Fire of Sin, there’s a palpably late ’90s feel in both songwriting and production, such that one could psychically slot the album among the No Fashion Records roster back then. Still, said EP whipped forth its own dread and delirium, and DEATHLESS VOID duly maximize that sensation here. The riffs and rhythms may attack in a somewhat-familiar manner, but coursing through their bloodstream is a haunting aspect that hovers both above and below, each texture daubed in nightmarishly psychedelic color – all emanating from BLACK. Not for nothing does the record (violently) begin with “Psychedelic Warfare” on to “Purple Triad,” with “The Ecstasy of Sin” able to be tasted when “Crossing the Threshold” until, finally, there’s a “Curse Upon You”…