Don’t you just hate in when things get lost in space? Well it was cyberspace that gobbled up a load of promo emails from Belgian based label Immortal Frost Productions but liking their output I agreed to play catch up with the last 6 months or so or so of stuff and here is the first from Sept of last year.
Now although most underground dwellers know Darkspace fairly well, what of the similarly entitled Deadspace? Possibly not so in Europe as they are from over the other side of the world and based out of Perth Australia but they have a pretty massive back-catalogue stemming back to 2014 including six full length albums. Whether this is their seventh is debatable as it is only a short five-track and 24-minute release. Rest assured though it makes up for that with a weight behind it that is very much on the impactful side of things. No doubt this is helped immensely due to the fact that none other than Déhà has found time from his countless projects to sit-on the flight deck and master this multi-layered monster.
Despite first atmospheric plunge into cold vacuumless depths as we ‘Enter the Valley of the Dead’ here we are grounded on earth as far as the subject matter is concerned. Focus is apparently based on mankind’s inevitable decline at the hands of those leading us into the abyss due to corruption and greed, this is no science fiction tale but one based in realism. Cold synth work reminiscent a bit of the work from countryman Dis Pater oozes out the speakers and is accompanied by a voice from the void warning of what is to come. The full power billows out on ‘Within His Wretched Tomb’ and the caustic mass although slow is particularly hostile and domineering. Vocals gurgle with an alien harshness about them and the instrumentation is nothing short of calamitous. This is a black mass for the damned and it leaves you feeling pretty damn hopeless about any supposed future as it rolls, rumbles and revolts in equal measures. There is a morbid slow down along the melody to depressively suggest a requiem where everything lies lost and abandoned. The message is more than clear “And here lyeth man, buried within this wretched tomb.” Life remains long enough for us to ‘Dwell in Desdemona’ and the sound is vast and all-consuming, vocals inhuman as things take on a doomy miasma, gradually rising to craggy roars.
The title track snakes out via a lone dismal guitar line and as things join in it is all slow and sorrowful before gradually building and coating everything with a feeling of overwhelming hopelessness. Perhaps the palest truth is that we are all doomed, we simply need to confront this. The band do a damn good job at projecting that misery here and as we move into the final section it’s pretty evident from title ‘A Feast for the Rats’ that mankind has fallen. Despite brevity this is a short-apocryphal shocker of a tale based in the very near future. If you like your black metal delivered with an at times funeral doom etched pace with a vast cold and hostilely oppressive sound this will certainly hit the mark. If like me, it is your first encounter with Deadspace, it seems like a very good starting point and there’s no shortage of material on the group’s Bandcamp page to drag you further into the depths of disillusionment and oblivion.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
https://www.facebook.com/deadspaceaus
https://immortalfrostproductions1.bandcamp.com/album/unveiling-the-palest-truth
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