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NOTHINGNESS
Supraliminal

Everlasting Spew (2023)
Rating: 9/10

Some severely cool artwork graces the second full-length release from Minneapolis, Minnesota-based death metal combo Nothingness. And while the album and its dissonant bludgeoning will no doubt have many people drawing comparisons to a number of bands ranging from Gorguts to Gojira, there is also something originally hellish about this cosmic creation.

Nothingness knows how to construct vast pillars of sulphuric evil that belch peculiar, abrasive vapours and wild streaks of technicality, as evidenced on the extraordinary ‘Catapulted Into Hyperspace’ with its alien designs in the guitar department.

Everything on offer throughout this album is intimidating yet esoteric as those lyrical tapestries speak of unnameable horrors and discordance. ‘Inviolate Viscera’, ‘Horrendous Incantation’ and ‘Curse Of Creation’ marry vile bursts of unorthodox speed and hammering with twisted passages of jarring, and yet it’s a world away from the over-thought tirades of tech-death. Instead, we get consumed by layers of persistent pulverisations but all coated in some perverse and caustic Technicolor nightmare driven by dry, throaty vocal gasps and slower, dread-filled yawning of desperation and fear.

Somehow, Nothingness remain grounded within the eye of such a storm of sea-sickness so that even the more befuddling expressions seem close at hand and never inaccessible, but then why would anyone want to access or infiltrate such veils of trepidation and cacophony? The likes of ‘Beacon Of Loss’ and ‘The Anvil’ are all tumultuous and intense affairs dripping with ultra-violet imagery and swirling as abrasive maelstroms of anguish.

If ever a sound was matched by its cover art it is this one; a crushing, festering amalgamation of annihilation and exploration. The best album of 2023 so far…but can it hold on for another 11 months to such a mantle?

Neil Arnold

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