Spinebuster Entertainment is the new label created by the founders of Transcending the Mundane, an excellent print magazine/zine that ran from 1996-2006, and the third album from Canada’s Ethereal Void is one of their first releases.
The trio, comprised of Vollicide, Logan Mayhem, and Nemesis, don’t have much information out there about their background (except bassist /vocalist Vollicide, who has The Design Abstract, Ut Interficias Inanis, and Violent Goat Rot under his credits), but deliver a very impressive style of chunky and technical death metal.
The focus is definitely on the ‘chunky’ aspect, as the production and the songwriting lend themselves to a very nice, hefty, stammering presence, bolstered by some solid, head-bopping songwriting and an authoritative bellow.
The promotional email references ‘groove metal’ and the likes of Gojira, Septicflesh, and Meshuggah, and that’s not a stretch; I’d throw in Decapitated’s more modern, chunkier moments (the main riff and guitar tone in “Primitive Voices I” gave me “Day 69” vibes), and maybe the Danish scene like Illdisposed and Dawn of Demise.
There’s also a tribal, sometimes industrial pulse and throb aspect to some of the material that adds just a little something I can’t quite put my finger on (i.e., “Atavistic Anarchy”, the intro/ interludes “Incipient Aeternam”, “Paleopraxia”).
The trio breaks out a blast beat or faster moment here and there, like the still-beefy “Primitive Voices I and II” and “Sequential Lifeblood” and even a little atmosphere to start and end “Primitive Voices III”. But it’s tracks like “Moulded By Emptiness”, the trundling “The Lifeless Black”, and “Sequential Lifeblood”, “Chaos Transcendent” and closer “Writhe” that will have you failing the ‘don’t head bang’ challenge pretty quickly.
Ethereal Void and Primordial Dissonance aren’t doing anything particularly new or exciting, but there is something here that keeps bringing me back to it.
