Deathless Void – The Voluptuous Fire of Sin (Review)

This is the debut album from Deathless Void, a black metal band from the Netherlands.

The Voluptuous Fire of Sin contains 39 minutes of aggressive black metal. Deathless Void play a style that manages to incorporate a few mutually complementary elements into itself, enriching its hostility with greater depth and range.

Deathless Void’s music is an enticing blend of bleak aggression, majestic melody, and dark mood. It’s black metal that can trace its influences back to the second wave, but has also learned from more modern strains of the blackened plague. It has had a death metal injection too, fully absorbed into the album’s scathing assault.

The best way to approach The Voluptuous Fire of Sin is to imagine that a war metal band discovered melodic colour and atmospheric might, and then broadened their attack accordingly. It’s still brutal and harsh, but has extra tools to fashion its weapons with.

The songs are virulent and infectious, delivering a toxic shock to the system filled with raging malevolent intensity. It’s not all pure caustic brutality though, as this primary aspect of The Voluptuous Fire of Sin is offset skilfully by the band’s use of melody and atmospheric components. Deathless Void infuse their songs with fiery melodic bite and grim apocalyptic auras, making for a compelling mixture of sounds.

In effect, Deathless Void offer up a more intricate and developed version of black/death metal, while losing only the bare minimum of war metal’s inherent fury. The results speak for themselves really, as The Voluptuous Fire of Sin is a record that has much to engage with.

Dark, aggressive, immersive, and enjoyable; Deathless Void have a made a good impression with their debut album.

Highly recommended.