Threads Of Unknowing
Review Score: 8.5
Reviewed By: Jason Deaville
VOIDCEREMONY, who hail from the thrashified heartland of San Francisco, burst onto the extreme metal scene in 2011 with a distinctive and perverted fusion of grindcore and technically proficient black metal. Dystheism, the group’s debut EP, won praise for its unpolished and unforgiving dynamics.
Over the last several years, the band have churned out five impressive slabs of high quality blackened death metal – including 2016’s Foul Origins Of Humanity and 2020’s Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel – cementing VOIDCEREMONY as one of the most innovative and original extreme metal acts of their generation.
Thread Of Unknowing, the latest album from VOIDCEREMONY, features six tracks of complex and brutal-as-fuck blackened death metal that draws from a wide range of influences. The band has expanded their use of progressive metal and jazz fusion, which adds a noticeable complexity over their previous releases.
The highlight of the album is arguably ‘Forlorn Portrait: Ruins of an Ageless Slumber.’ This lengthy epic song, which clocks in at just over eleven minutes, is a masterwork of progressive blackened death metal, displaying intricate riffs and dissonance that weave together to create a dense, brash wall of sound. The song opens with an eerie, phantasmal swagger that immediately establishes the tone for the rest of the song. The guitar work is incredibly charismatic, with intricate arpeggios and jazz-fusion interludes that combine to create an anxiety and tension that is then fed through a blackened death metal filter. Adding to that, the resonance and modulation of the song continually shifts, contributing to the overall feeling of impending doom.
‘Writhing In The Facade Of Time’ is another highlight. This inhuman-yet-musically-introspective song deviates slightly from the band’s more aggressive approach, demonstrating their ability to create music that is both cavernous and resonant. The song starts with a gloomy, galloping fade-in, followed by sepulchral vocals that crawl beneath the suffocating dissonance. Again, the guitar work is especially impressive, with intricate patterns and arpeggios combining to create an unnerving dichotomy of misery and introspection. The tempo of the song vexes and writhes, inevitably ending in a cataclysmic void of nothingness.
The album’s production is murderously dark and claustrophobic sounding, yet each instrument and vocal track are somehow clearly defined in the mix. The production enhances the ghastly quality of the music, with layers of reverb and delay adding a false sense of space and depth to the oppressiveness.
Overall, Thread Of Unknowing is a strong album that clearly exhibits VOIDCEREMONY‘s maturation as a band. This album is sure to please fans of cavernous death metal and progressive black metal, as well as anyone who appreciates innovative and challenging music which focuses on complex instrumentation, and experimental songwriting.