Nameless Void - Nameless Void

Nameless Void's sole self titled release is yet another example of the dominance of cosmic atmospheres and existential nihilism that is so pervasive within the black metal / noise genres. The shift towards this deeply personal and individualistic attempt at fear and bleakness, at turning the spotlight on the insignificance of our lives by the measurements of cosmic phenomena and events, an ontological extremism in contrast to the overplayed angles, is ever more abundant in recent releases, it seems. By all comparisons Nameless Void is extreme in it's effect: unsettling, surprising, harsh, and depressing. There are no complaints from me at all along these fronts and the tape is successful in achieving it's goal of blatant unacceptable auditory terror coupled with its thematic displeasure.

Yet, If I may be so controversial in my assessment, there is no such thing as extremity any longer. The unintentional desensitization of the masses has reached it's zenith to a point where it is essentially impossible to create something which has the potential to impact the emotions of a listener so thoroughly that the mark remains an indelible scar on the psyche. Gone are the days when Black Metal was still something dangerous to discover, when Metal had a congressional target on it's back, and when a single hip-thrust ruined the innocence of a generation of women. To think, in terms of sexuality, there hasn't been anything so extreme as Elvis' lower half having to be cropped from TV in the modern era. Somewhere in the vast expanse of the cosmos is a TV signal which has the potential to destroy the procreation rituals of distant life forms; a human male butt in white leather pants shaking with a cultural lethality on par with that of a sniper's bullet.



But Nameless Void does a good job of creating ominous and tense cosmic atmospheres through a thoroughly balanced approach and were I to play any of these three songs for eighty-five percent of listeners, they would surely be uneasy to be in close proximity with me for the rest of their life. For laymen, most of this effect comes from the sections of war-metal blasting, but I find the gritty tonality from the synths which crawl over everything like a large spider to carry the main dreadful weight. Similar to Vessel of Iniquity's recently reviewed eponymous demo tape, Nameless Void combine the same basic ingredients, but where Vessel of Iniquity allowed the ambient, atmospheric elements to lay submerged, here they take precedence. Drumming is extremely distant, vocals are a flange-laden roiling slime where they survive, and the synths are the major foundational force for the music supporting the song structures.

Of the three songs, "Black Wormhole" happens to be my favorite of the bunch - probably because it is the only song which relies totally on the synth-horror. The six minutes of low, droning, evil, masochistic tones is a beacon shining light on where Nameless Void hide their best material. Undulating bottom-end frequencies sound humid and festering, thriving in the magnetic tape-hiss universe. At six minutes long, the track is not short by conventional means, however it also is not long, compared to the ten-minute long serpents which slither alongside it in this swamp of a tape. I think anyone who appreciates funeral doom with a blackened element would enjoy Nameless Void, especially fans of Nortt and Skepticism and the like.