Void Monuments hail from Russia, and after a brief hiatus, a few years back, reformed in 2024 and released the Temples of Pestilence demo. Armed with their debut album, Posthumous Imprecation, they are ready to take things to the next level.

The band is listed as a blackened death metal band, but honestly, I don’t really notice black metal in their sound. Yeah, there’s some keyboards and shit thrown around a bit like on “Devilish Prophecies”, but that’s about it. Anyway, back to this song. Reworked a bit from their demo, this tune is one of the strongest songs on this album. Starts doomy, slow doomy, with a bit of an old Autopsy tinge, even in the faster gallop that erupts.

Let me digress a bit…I dig their organic sound. The guitar tone is actually warm and not processed. Anyway, the song picks up a faster-paced speed, and Oleg Malleus has a good set of pipes. For reference purposes, he does a pretty nailed-down version of David Vincent, from the third and fourth legendary Morbid Angel albums, when Vincent’s voice went a tad deeper and more gruff. There are a variety of tempo shifts with a Morbid Angel style to some of the bendy guitar chords, and the keys towards the back end of the song add some creepy ambience. Excellent song.

Let’s rewind back to the beginning, and the opening intro is rather long, at over two minutes, with the synths and atmosphere. It’s ok, but nothing spectacular that’s gonna knock you on your ass. Epitome of Fear comes forth with a killer isolated guitar riff. The song picks up the pace, then slows back down to a mid-paced, similar in style to Bolt Thrower. This part with the riffage and double bass is most excellent. Lots of tempo shifts to spin your little head around. Really cool song. It would have been neat for that intro to have started and been only a few seconds, starting low, then sped up and louder, and gone right into this song with that opening isolated riff…would have owned.

I always say, know your metal history, and Void Monuments forgot that part with the song “Decapitate the Saints”. “Decapitated Saints” was a killer song on Vader’s great debut album, The Ultimate Incantation, released decades ago. Regardless, there’s an ambience to the buildup, and then the mid-paced opening has a guitar solo over it. Neat! The song has a nice jumpy riff, during the slower moments, with really cool vocals and growls. The song picks up the pace, and when I have said that before, the pace never gets into blast beat territory on the album. We are talking about more of a classic, death metal speed of the late 80’s, early 90’s. Almost death thrashy, but 100% death metal. This song has more slower moments, and the doom is evident in certain sections.

“Father of Sin” ends the album has slower, doomier passage,s and the gallop, fairly early on, is terrific. The band has a pretty decent rhythm section going for them, and this song is one of the best on the album. The mid-paced, slower moments and galloping sections work great, without the faster parts. So I am glad they left those parts outta the song.

Posthumous Imprecation is a gnarly little death metal album from Void Monuments. With a classic type of album cover design, calling to mind the death metal years of yore, this is a well-done debut album. It’s tough finding bands with originality these days, because there’s literally like a billion extreme metal bands. Void Monuments, though, play their music with conviction ,and I love this older style of death metal so much. The band hit the mark with the production on this. Good stuff!

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