Oscar Wilde believed that life imitates art far more than art imitates life, but like most great art, music is at its most affecting when it draws from personal turmoil and the internal struggles we experience daily. Life is pain etc.

With that in mind, I Live Inside A Burning House (Dry Cough / Crown & Throne / Seeing Red) might just be the most painful listening experience you’re likely to encounter this year, and that isn’t the derogatory statement it seems. For some, our very existence is a day-to-day battle of attrition. Whether you’re warring against your own mental health, or your identity and place in this world, Body Void have sonically captured the kind of endurance test that life is likely to throw at you and the catharsis that comes with it.

Fans of Body Void’s previous record Ruins will know how purposefully demanding the Bay Area trio can be. It was near 40 minutes of pained screeches and crushing, miserable riffs that culminated in one bleak trudge through depression, gender identity, and death. The brief intro sets the tone with a creeping, deeply unsettling drone before ‘Haunted’ starts to pull you into a lurching, hypnotic trance. The barrage of thick, sludgy riffs, backed up by blood-curdling shrieks builds this overbearing tension, and you can almost feel the weight of the world pushing down upon you.

This might seem like standard practice for most doom and sludge bands but, on this occasion, Body Void stretch that feeling of oppression and self-hate well over the hour mark to the point where it almost becomes too much to bear. That catharsis does come eventually, however, in short bursts. ‘Trauma Creature’ starts with this fuzzed-up manifestation of anxiety and paranoia before a moment of respite arrives in the form of a punk-tinged riff rips through the haze. When it’s done, you’re left wishing for that burst and the emotional release to return; but it won’t, not until ‘Phantom Limb’. The distant sound of beating drums and rumbling bass just hint at a change of pace before another stress-inducing lull.

This isn’t doom that echoes the kind of Lovecraftian, cavernous yawn that will swallow you whole that most of their peers create, instead it paints a much more distressing picture that you will be consumed by your own inner abyss. It’s difficult to say whether I Live Inside A Burning House is an enjoyable experience. It’s an album that is physically painful to listen to and lyrically/thematically it focuses on some of our most troubling thoughts and feelings. However, whereas Ruins had a fascination with fatalism, by the end of I Live Inside A Burning House we’re bizarrely hopeful, as we learn to live with our pain, and that survival is worth the harrowing experience.

8.0/10

ROSS JENNER