Voidthrone are a US black metal band and this is their third album.
I enjoyed both 2016’s Spiritual War Tactics and 2018’s Kur, so after four long years it’s about time we heard more from Voidthrone. Metaphysical Degradation is a 38-minute mix of black and death metal dissonance, delivered with spite and wrapped in venom.
Metaphysical Degradation offers a complicated combination of unhinged chaos and controlled restraint. The various influences that the band put into the music crash and smash together into a vortex of black/death metal violence, until something foul and malevolent emerges from the corpses of these two stylistic progenitors. This resultant monstrosity is then bred into packs of starved killers; some are unleashed in all of their raw savagery, while others are brutally trained in the art of intricate dissonance and let loose to cause targeted damage, while their untamed brothers cause wanton carnage.
Yes, it’s great to have some new Voidthrone again.
These songs are brutal and merciless examples of modern black/death metal. The dissonant influences are ubiquitous, but never to the detriment of the raw frenetic energy of the songs or their moody menace. Voidthrone marry their controlled and chaotic sides together very well, playing off them in an evolutionary contest of attrition until all that’s left is the strongest material combining dark atmosphere, oppressive aggression, and technical hatred in the most satisfying of ways.
I’ve always had somewhat of a soft spot for Voidthrone. Their music has always hit the hard-to-define sweet space between cold dissonance and feral abandon, and I have to say that on Metaphysical Degradation the band have reached new heights of expressive chaos and warped terror.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 