Vacuous

Vacuous

Katabasis

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***Vacuous' monstrous debut mini-album Katabasis sees a vinyl reissue via Sentient Ruin after its limited first pressing sold out shortly after its original 2021 release. With this release the London, UK-based death horde refined its dismal and pulverizing dark death metal sound, using influences from bands like Incantation, Immolation, and Autopsy to forge an unseen weapon of sonic terror. Katabasis immediately established Vacuous as a rising unholy force in UK underground extreme metal, securing the band a cult following in their home country and eventually a debut full-length release deal via Dark Descent Records and Me Saco Un Ojo.

Vacuous

Dreams Of Dysphoria

Dark Descent

London’s Vacuous finally present their debut album to follow the magnificent 2020 EP Katabasis. Greeting the listener along with the equally gloomy cover-art is an array of spectral and atmospheric death metal that is haunting beyond the nightmarish depths of the human mind. Perhaps owing to their fixation on the human psyche, or the equally inescapable reality their music conjures with contorting riffs, rock-solid drumming and bellowed vocals, chasms of atmosphere are opened to pour one’s own psyche into. One of the most unique things about Vacuous is their ability to play such bludgeoning, heavy music while retaining a very anguished emotional side, lending massively to the cataclysmic ambience of Dreams Of Dysphoria. The outcome of this is music is sonically punishing. From eerily dragging moments of graven doom through to the churning malice of sickeningly twisted fury, there is nothing but charnel brilliance on display here in a truly diverse platter of hostilities. While one could wrongfully assume that there is only simplicity to be found in this style of music, Vacuous have an utterly unique, warped way of writing their songs that is like no other. From the gloomier moments to the gut-wrenching hooks, there is always something slightly off-kilter here that is disquieting and unfamiliar. This feverish and unwelcoming side of the music is hard to shake, which gives the album a genuinely disturbing factor while the absolutely ferocious death metal core is never lost, nor anything short of thrust upon oneself. It would be an easy...