Body Void – You Will Know the Fear You Forced upon Us (Review)

Body Void are a doom band from the US and this is their latest EP.

After last year’s colossal I Live Inside a Burning Building I wasn’t expecting to hear anything new from Body Void for a while, but I’m very pleased to be mistaken.

Although billed as an EP, this release contains 39 minutes of new material. It’s spread across two mammoth tracks, each almost 20 minutes in duration. Body Void don’t do things by halves it seems.

Every bit as despairingly bleak and crushingly dark as its predecessor, these new songs are filled with hateful sludge and scolding doom. Body Void build sprawling structures and grim soundscapes, with seeming ease, and these two tracks are worthy companion pieces to the band’s previous work.

These songs do have a slightly different feel, however. I was intrigued by this quote from one of the band members – “We toured extensively last summer to promote that record [ILIABH] and while we’re still super happy with it, we found playing some of those songs live to be pretty difficult for weeks at a time,” Ryan admits. “Not because we didn’t like them, but because they were such a workout!” – and it turns out that this has had a noticeable, albeit relatively subtle, difference in writing style and delivery. While still ostensibly the same type of music, You Will Know the Fear You Forced upon Us is a little bit simpler and more straightforward. Take that with a pinch of salt, of course, as we’re still talking 20-minute displays of crushing intensity and emotive darkness.

Die Off is almost catchy, with its relentlessly heavy riffs and driving potency. It ends in a rare burst of speed, before piling on the heaviness for one final time. Fascist Cancer seems initially inspired by the last part of Die Off, in the sense that it starts fast and aggressive, before settling into a malevolent groove. As you’d expect, things slow down from there, as the band truly descend into a Khanate-esque nightmarescape of minimalism and terrifying spaces between sounds for a while. The remainder of the song is both heavy and compelling, although that could essentially sum up the EP as a whole, I suppose.

Featuring textured extremity and harsh tormented vocals, Body Void have lost none of their power on You Will Know the Fear You Forced upon Us. The band still handle dark, negative emotion extremely well, and these two songs are filled with it.

This latest release only cements how effective and enjoyable Body Void are. This is an essential listen for anyone that’s a fan of this sort of extreme doom.

Find out more here.