(written by Islander)
If we think of ourselves as listener-fish scurrying through the sea of our days and music-makers as throngs of fishers trying to catch our attention, what lures work best? For some fish it might be affectionate familiarity with a band’s previous music. Lacking such familiarity, it might be a genre description or a “for fans of” reference or an al-luring piece of cover art.
In the case of Voidthrone from the Pacific Northwest and their new album Dreaming Rat (set for release on May 8th), it might be all of that, but they have one additional lure — an intriguing concept underlying the album (or overarching it). They organize the album’s nine songs into a triptych of parallel “Arcs” which together create “a three-part cosmic death ritual”. Each numbered Arc has its own title, and we’ll get to those, but the three could be summed up with these words:
“a solar system burning through its lifespan, a civilization collapsing under its own complexity, and a parasite replicating itself across language, culture, and flesh”
photos by DiGruccio Photography
The listener-fish analogy doesn’t completely fit Voidthrone’s concept. While the band are clearly trying to lure in listeners, it may be that we are instead envisioned as the dreaming rat on the album cover, meant to “drift calmly and unflinching through the maelstrom” that Voidthrone have made, as their publicist suggests.
However, while the album could be considered as a kind of dream (a very unreal and unsettling one), drifting calmly and unflinchingly through it would be a task beyond the capabilities of most mortals — as you’ll discover for yourselves through our premiere of the entire experience.
But for the moment, let’s go back to some of those previously mentioned lures. Familiarity with the band’s previous releases — their musical evolution from Spiritual War Tactics (2016) through Kur (2018) and Metaphysical Degradation (2022) — could be one of those.
Or you might be enticed by the “dissonant blackened death metal” genre description or the FFO reference to “Imperial Triumphant, Deathspell Omega, Krallice, Ulcerate, Portal, Morbid Angel, and the absolute heat death of the universe”.
Or a degree of intrigue may be kindled by knowing that the instrumentation Voidthrone use includes Japanese Otamatone, Conch shell, Jaw harp, fretless bass, acoustic guitars, Vibraslap, Didgeridoo, and Spoons, in addition to more conventional metal instruments.
However you might be lured to it, we do encourage you to bite the hook, because this album really isn’t like anything you’re likely to encounter this year.
Strangely perhaps, Dreaming Rat begins with Arc 2, not Arc 1. Arc 2’s title is “The vital present. A universe, a civilization, an idea flourishing into a promised infinity.”
The first song in that Arc is “Homeless Animal”. It introduces listeners to vocalist Zhenya Frolov’s utterly unhinged expulsions, a changing array of berserk howls, paint-stripping screams, bestial barks, and near-throat-singing. It also introduces listeners to riffing that sears, shines, and abrades but also strangely quivers and squirms, a blistering but also bizarre cavalcade of sound.
By way of further introduction, the song includes the warm, prog-influenced bubbling of the fretless bass (and magma-like bass upheavals), constantly shifting tempos and drum patterns that might frolic one moment and gallop or brutally batter the next, and other tonal accents that are difficult to identify but add to the song’s overarching aura of madness.
In other words, although the genre description of “dissonant blackened death metal” isn’t out of place, Voidthrone’s music is much more elaborate, mercurial, and distinctively idiosyncratic than what that label usually suggests.
The other two songs in Arc II — “Morbid Seagull” and “Red Omega” reinforce that impression. The first of them initially casts a more dismal shade on the affair, and Zhenya Frolov’s wild wails sound frighteningly tortured (but still clinically insane), but the song also begins to sound strangely jubilant, thanks in part to horn-like burbling tones and bouts of feverish fretwork and riotous percussion. The word “bizarre” again comes to mind, as does the word “hallucinatory”.
“Red Omega”, on the other hand, burns so hot that it feels like a nuclear assault turning stone to glass, but the fretwork also brutishly jolts the listener, frenetically convulses and contorts, squiggles and darts, and generally drenches listeners in a spectacle of lunatic intricacy. At one point Frolov also emits a gurgling growl that goes on and on, seems to hysterically cackle, and howls like a rabid werewolf.
Lest you fear that we’re going to linguistically dissect the next two Arcs in as much detail as the first, we’re not. But lest you think that the next two Arcs don’t bring anything new, they do, though they are usually just as elaborate and off-the-hook as the first trio.
Arc 1, titled “The hopeful past. A maelstrom of violence and optimism.” includes new instrumental sounds, some of them glittering and graceful, some of them moaning and mind-warping. Things get jazzy and proggy, as well as violently vicious. There’s also a hell of a head-spinning guitar solo in “Bergen”, doses of high-flying and wildly whirling guitars in the non-stop carnival of “Dreaming Rat”, and brief moments of dreaminess and grandeur in the otherwise psychotic delirium of “First Blood” — which ends with an elegant acoustic guitar outro.
Arc 3 is titled “The silent future. An extinguished, lonely death of the physical, spiritual, and cognitive.” It includes three more songs of course, bringing the album in at a significant 46 minutes total. Those three include their own quirks and surprises (including vocal surprises) in the midst of lots of head-spinning kaleidoscopic hysteria.
A few closing points to reemphasize: First, the technical skill of the performers is frankly astounding throughout. Second, the songwriting is both remarkably intricate and remarkably adventurous, so much so that it’s hard to imagine how any of it was conceived and plotted. Third, the music is a fantastical genre hybrid that incorporates stylistic ingredients way beyond black and death metal. Fourth, the vocals are always fanatically freaked-out.
And fifth, well fifth, the previously used phrase “psychotic delirium” really applies to the album as a whole. To be honest, this isn’t music for base-level headbangers or anyone hungry for catchy, hummable tunes. It’s more for people who don’t mind being left pop-eyed, jaw-dropped, and trying to reassemble the scattered fragments of their sanity.
So, now that we’ve scattered plenty of our own lures, time for you to bite down if you haven’t already!
VOIDTHRONE is:
Zhenya Frolov – Vocals, Japanese Otamatone, Conch shell.
Ron – Guitar, Jaw Harp.
Gavin Brooks – Fretless and Fretted Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Guitar Solos.
Josh Keifer – Drums, Vibraslap, Didgeridoo, Spoons.
The Dreaming Rat cover art is the work of Kiri Yu (kiriska.com). The album is available for pre-order now.
PRE-ORDER:
https://voidthrone.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-rat
FOLLOW:
https://www.facebook.com/voidthrone
https://www.instagram.com/voidthronemetal/