Album Review: Dead Void - Cranial Devastation
Reviewed by Sam Jones
One of the many bands playing this year’s Kill Town Death Fest, Dead Void will also be releasing their sophomore studio album for early June and likely perform said new material come their set. Formed right in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark, Dead Void are merely one of the expansive pantheon of names making up Denmark’s sprawling extreme metal scene. Their early years saw a peppering of Demos but with the onset of 2022 they took their first stride forward with Volatile Forms, a monstrous album topping many people’s best of the year lists. Four years on Dead Void are back with Cranial Devastation set for a June 6th release, once more distributed through Me Saco Un Ojo Records, and are ready to blitz synapses a second time round with their harrowing death/doom.
Cranial Devastation is a heavy record, that much is abundantly apparent from the start since Dead Void’s atmosphere is dripping with sinister desires. Though their tempo is mostly steady and allows their riffs to convey the encroaching horror unfolding therein, Dead Void are more than prepared to intensify their songwriting with faster and more rabid fervour. The overall feeling derived doesn’t change too much but their meaty riffs, compacted and brought into greater succession, infers a more manic performance, the kind that truly sells desperation experienced in unknown circumstances.
The energy brought forth from their faster songwriting is incredible. The riffs and guitar tone, the kind most acts would preserve solely for slower and trudging sequences, are still employed during Dead Void’s most frantic moments. This rapid-fire succession of fat notes with guitar resonance that doesn’t stick around to know your response to them crafts a sickening and noxious atmosphere, infusing breakneck speed with terrible weight that like a landslide gathering momentum belies every ounce of boulder and jagged rock in its tumult.
The very beginning to the record highlights the bass and as the initial chords begin you’ll always know where the bass is within the mix and how it’s contributing to the record as a whole. This is the case for Cranial Devastation throughout its duration for its bass tone is explicit, and I’d argue it’s the primary source of crushing heaviness for Dead Void’s songwriting; the tone and soloing and vocals are equally important, but it’s undeniable the bass possesses an incremental position. The riffs carry you from one track to the next but it’s the bass that tickles your ears and informs you just how relentless the band are about to become. It’s the bass lines that aid the band in establishing their cavernous sound, especially since Dead Void seemingly perform this record from a cave’s mouth and what’s recorded is that very subterranean utterance.
Whilst the vocals themselves are nothing especially new to death/doom I appreciate the cadence and near-theatricality thrown into them. Given both members share vocal responsibilities on record it’s this interplay of differing styles that gives Cranial Devastation’s vocal element its menacing, straining deplorability. Their vocals don’t merely sit on a single plain unmoving; the record’s topography is constantly shifting with the tracks so there are times where the vocals rise and fall, they climb to shrieking monstrosity, they’ll rise with unabating mania all the while bellowing afar as this echo invokes the cavernous atmosphere aforementioned.
In conclusion, Cranial Devastation is a blitzing, ferocious ride that will take you from your mundane surroundings into a world of nightmares and anguish. It’s this beast that rolls with greater momentum the further in you go, so by the album’s end Dead Void have accumulated such frantic strength their eyes popping out of their sockets and their synapses are verging on snapping. Though their pace often rises to furious scope the songwriting never feels to escape you, that for all their wanton slaughter their performance constantly has you tied and bound to their side at every moment. Cranial Devastation will have you discovering new pieces on subsequent listens but that doesn’t mean the first listen won’t have you receiving the full breadth of Dead Void’s sound.i’m confident this record will be just as well received as their first and I am doubly excited to see them perform at this year’s Kill Town Death Fest.
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