Void Of Light, on their debut album, impressively unleash an intense and immersive exposition of the post-metal genre.

Release date: May 13th 2022

Label: Self Release (Bandcamp)

Format: Digital 

Void Of Light are a six-piece post-metal band from Glasgow. With a three guitarist, bass, drums, and vocals set up, they create a unique take on the post-metal genre, on their self-titled debut album. The band cites their main musical influences as including Cult Of Luna, Neurosis, and ISIS. While these influences come through on the album, this is also a band with their own definite sound, which sonically offers an immersive listening experience.

The album consists of three lengthy tracks, that provide an expansive creative space for the band to fully develop their musical vision. The album opens with the track Scion. The initial musical sequence is characterised by immense, reverberating riffs, and deep growled vocals, that fill up every musical space. This is followed by a quite beautiful section of music, where the drums and bass create an atmospheric, rolling rhythm, accompanied by splashes of cymbal. The soft, clean vocal, is matched by the plaintive, pealing guitar melodies. Switching up a gear again, the track then settles into a doom metal groove, with a melodically inventive guitar solo hovering over the crashing rhythms.

Harbinger, has a dense, propulsive, musical construction, that delivers recurring waves of sound. The frenetic, impressive drumming drives the ascending heaviness of the guitars, while a quieter mid-section draws attention to the lyrics, which have some of the evocative atmosphere of Peter Sinfield’s writing for King Crimson. Here is a small extract from the lyrics for Harbinger:

“to the cyclical and the common woe/as the decades call/so named/ collapsing

idols in collusion/a vista to conceal/apex of the known rescinded/grave be this delivered kind”

A Higher Order, the final track, clocks in at over 19 minutes. It is an ambitious composition, that strikingly has the melodic sensibilities of the legendary doom metal band Saint Vitus. The guitar tones exhibited throughout the piece, show an amazing range, varying through abrasive and soaring, to lilting and pastoral. The drums and bass fully match this wide tonal variation to superb effect. It is a track that slowly builds layer upon layer of intense sound, while anchored in a classic doom metal cadence. It is quite an achievement, both in terms of composition and musical range, providing a depth of interesting musical detail to explore. 

This is a very good debut album, and suggests a compelling musical experience when there is the opportunity to see the band perform it live.

Here’s Scion, the opening track from the album:

Void of Light: Bandcamp / Facebook / Instagram

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