If you like your death metal brutal, progressive, and quite possibly from another dimension then look no further than genre-bending quartet VoidCeremony. Formed in 2013, the Californian act’s second full-length studio album Threads of Unknowing (20 Buck Spin) delivers more of what was promised on their 2020 debut but with even more intensity and technical virtuosity.

Elements of Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Quo Vadis, and Imperial Triumphant all converge into one glorious cacophonous cosmic package from which there is little chance of escape. Right from the start the twin vocal/guitar attack of Garrett Johnson (aka Wandering Mind) and Phil Tougas (aka Hyperborean Apparition) blasts into worlds beyond with ‘Threads of Unknowing (The Paradigm of Linearity)’. A tumult of drums, squirming riffs and pulsating basslines, this opening blitzkrieg on the senses suddenly becomes a departure into almost improvisational jazz before returning to a furious, albeit slightly more regimented groove.

The otherworldly malevolence of ‘Writhing in the Facade of Time’ echoes the likes of Cynic, latter-day Death, and even Nile, inhuman guttural vocals sitting atop a mountain of sweep picking, chimerical scales, pinch harmonics, and off-kilter time signatures. ‘Abyssic Knowledge Bequeathed’ is a stomach-churning voyage into interdimensional horror, a seething maelstrom of abstract inhumanity and non-Euclidean riffs where the mid-point guitar solo is just about the only thing keeping you even slightly grounded. 

The same could almost be said for ‘Entropic Reflections Continuum’ as it lurches into view with a Voivod-style riff and a bass guitar clearly being abused by something with more tentacles than you’d want to imagine.

‘At the Periphery of Human Realms (The Immaterial Grave)’ is a suitably unbalanced, darkly phantasmagorical instrumental which fades into the ether before welcoming the final frenzy of ‘Forlorn Portrait: Ruins of an Ageless Slumber’. An eleven-minute progressive nightmare, the spellbinding climax at times appears entirely untethered from any remaining sense of reality. 

Charlie Koryn‘s drums tumble, roll, and blast into almost unimaginable realms of confusion while this disorienting composition plays host to some of the finest finger-contorting technical guitar solos you’re likely to hear this year. Deeply unmelodious vocals are gurgled and roared with now routine depravity, and the tentacled obscenity known as The Great Righteous Destroyer (aka Damon Good) is back doing some worryingly indecent things to that poor little fretless bass.

Combining the brutality of death metal, the buzzsaw savagery of black metal and wild or restrained flourishes of jazz experimentation, Threads of Unknowing takes you on a journey beyond immediate comprehension and patiently waits for the human mind to catch up. Enjoy, but remember to pick your sanity up from the floor afterwards.

Buy the album here:

https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/threads-of-unknowing

8 / 10

GARY ALCOCK