Teeming with death-pressed fluxion and rooted in a diabolic sense of kneejerk reactivity this second full-length album from Lombardy, Italy-based experimental death metal quartet DEVOID OF THOUGHT uses surprising bouts of eclecticism to flavor its harried, neon-lit flow. Taking a full bodied step through the portal(s) proposed by their debut ‘Devoid of Thought‘ finds the band freely associating what it can pull from the apeiron into conjure as a series of five revelations are tasked with unravelling what death metal abstraction might entail going forward. The end result is scouring, a smartly staggering walk through the possibilities as their entire death metal machine is infested with a full spectrum of psychedelic, dissonant, prog-fusion’d and altogether bizarre-yet-ruthless expression.

Now a decade deep into their pivot away from classic thrash metal tradition (as Warstorm) toward “cosmic” death metal inspired by earlier Blood Incantation and such the fellowes behind Devoid of Thought have spent the last half-decade pressurizing their convictions on the road. That is to say that testing their bonds, their performative notions and sense for practical movement in total align, posits a more capable band via boundaries tested… but also one now willing to define themselves by name with a self-titled record. Five years ago per my review of their debut LP (‘Outer World Graves‘, 2021) I’d suggested it was a work which bore a duality imposed by a yearslong process of development, an experience functionally split between demo-era songs and the next wave of thought. While it wasn’t yet their complete transformation it was an exceptional debut, one that’d end up placed #36 on my Top 75 Albums of 2021 per its cavernous atmosphere, dissonant sometimes prog-thrashing guitar work, and at-times technical approach to surrealistic 90’s death metal inspiration. ‘Devoid of Thought‘ is the still-growing malignity beyond.

Devoid of Thought‘s ambitious reach on their debut hardly lacked coherence but it was arguably a stretch to amalgamate so many stylized interests unto a singular ideal. The glue that bound it all together was concerned with an atmospheric death metal framework at the time whereas today on ‘Devoid of Thought‘ they’ve found clarity and succinct conjoindre through progressive death metal’s freely formed sense of movement rather than Incantation-esque doom. Atmosphere remains a key aspect of their sound but to a different degree as the strictures that’d bound ‘Outer World Graves‘ are loosened away from underground fundamentalism into more of a “jam”… At least to start as opener “Panspermic Bio-Dome” swells and fumes with jazz fusion-esque tension beyond the bestially tumbling dissonant sling of its opening moments. Cacophonic vocal layers and obsessively stabbed verse riffs bring some Nucleus-type skronking bulge to their movement but this is frequently interrupted by tentative psychedelic interstitia and spoken word/sampled speech, making for an oddly swinging but aggressive mutation outright.

“Chronos” is comparatively normative as a skronking prog-death piece trucked through at odd-shifting meter, an important point of rooting for ‘Devoid of Thought‘ which explores freshly exaggerative vocal performances and spoken word that, to me, recalls the weirder side of early Alchemist in its diction including the rushing, thrashed wheel through their rhythms otherwise. That piece combined with the chaotic, run-heavy, Cryptopsy-like pummel through “Putrescent Mireborn” continue to suggest a looser, elastic snap to the overall rhythmic interest found on this new album. Part of this observation comes per performances from new(er) drummer C.I. (Putridity, ex-Amalekim) who brings solid foundation to otherwise freely flung and hard-stabbed munitions otherwise. The drum recordings sound a bit rough on my end, lacking some definition in the kicks in general, but this lends a sense of live-in-studio performance to the record, the inflection of a more abrupt and noisome act.

At the risk of introducing any amount of unintended irony nearby the band’s name ‘Devoid of Thought‘ left me feeling somewhat stymied by Side A via pieces which appear to avoid brain-hooking statement and instead favor chemical comingling of elements into unassuming form, a drug-cocktail of myriad design and unruly effect built from experimentation. As the album presses through its mangling and abrupt flexion of veering moves Devoid of Thought appear more and more as a prog-death jam band leaning into a few prepared pieces, as if Lightning Bolt‘d took interest in early Portal while feeling the audience. You’ll get what I mean when encountering the two pieces which make up Side B as they’ve provided very little terra firma to latch onto as bestial, frantic sluice overtakes. “Oblivionauts” doesn’t appear outright improvised, it certainly possesses the caverncore-cut shaping one’d expect for most of its seven and a half minute stretch, but the faster these folks whip at their ideas the more unhinged some of their composition appears. The final third of the song makes this case a bit more clear but closer “Entheogenic Ritual” lets loose in complete fashion, unraveling the focus of the experience entirely, or, perhaps functionally.

At ~36 minutes and with just five songs to consider ‘Devoid of Thought‘ has plenty enough time to leave a dent within its proceedings and mostly does so. They’ve done a brilliant job of fleshing out a new dialect in the process and despite stretching their grasp wide and speaking in tongues. That said I’d found Devoid of Thought only just arrived upon this new mode within their exploration without extracting a truly mind-snapping deployment of it. That isn’t to suggest that they’ve missed the mark, the first half of the album carries its own brilliancies and the second offers a deeper step into unique improv-death mutation, but moreso that their work is conceptually interesting rather than immediately repeatable per my own taste. What flows from the band’s second album is semblant of a rarely viable “psychedelic” progressive death metal idyll ex utero though this might perturb folks seeking a more direct connectivity to the ‘new old school’ sector the band’d birthed adjacent to. A moderately high recommendation.

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