Today we have the privilege of sharing an early stream of “Ren Omega” the latest featured track taken from Seattle, Washington-based experimental black/death metal quartet VOIDTHRONE‘s fourth full-length album ‘Dreaming Rat‘. Challenging the status quo with disruptive thought since 2016 the scouring madness these folks’ve long summoned resembles grinding, noisome, dissonant, brutal and outright avant-garde landmarks ensuring no two records are too similar. On ‘Dreaming Rat‘ increasingly prog-death coded movement inspires freshly chaotic forms, a level of wobbling venture which they’ve wheeled through with characteristically caustic hand. It makes for some of their biggest, most manic motion to date as their work seeks to embody increasingly confrontational pan-psychological themes.

Today we embrace “Ren Omega” a point of peaking revelatory psychosis from the second act (which comes first) where the wild-skulled expression of vocalist Zhenya Frolov and increasingly virtuosic bass guitar movement (via Gavin Brooks) both offer major highlight. It is a fitting hall of mirrors, a wild video and a particularly key piece with regard to the larger themes addressed within the album, as suggested by the band:

“Ren Omega, the song, is the zenith of the Thought/Concept/Meme sub-story of the Dreaming Rat album. It explores the long moment where said idea reaches a critical state within a culture. It becomes a touchstone/through-line of a society. All utterances, art, interactions between members of a society are pregnant with references to the idea.

One such channel for these pervasive references is common language. Think of the utility and joy of having a shared lexicon with someone! The visions and feelings generated by electric meat inside your skull can be communicated to those around you. The I inside can make an impression on others; it can assert Its existence. There is a power there, to send data laden with meaning and express it verbally, textually, abstractly.

Think now how highly compressed some data is. If you and I share the background of Western Christian Philosophy (often simply by being born in a particular region, often by consuming media, conversation, culture), when I want you to imagine

Christ on a cross

You will be inundated by thoughts and connections formed by a lifetime of living in your culture. If you are “blessed” by hyperphantasia, you will see troubling/inspiring/horrific/beautific visions in your mind’s eye. You can’t help it.¹

Imagine a thought so compressed and so universal, that witnessing it sends shockwaves of awe and connection through your nervous system. It is bliss to behold. It is bliss to repeat it. You are you, but you are the thought as well. Your speech pattern shifts in order to slip references to the idea into conversation. Your gait changes, so you inadvertently tap out the idea into morse (or a more universal abstraction). Your art and writing has a lilt to it, with every mark and empty space implying the idea.

At the time of Ren Omega, this idea has saturated the zeitgeist. Technology and culture feel supercharged- every new thought and breakthrough develops at a blinding velocity. A utopia of advancement!

But, as is true with individuals, fervent productivity and focus has a cost and can’t be maintained forever. There is a breaking point, especially when the driving force is a preternatural, viral thought. At the cost of all, it needs to spread. At the cost of itself, it will consume the substrate which it permeates.

See this play out in the first incarnation of the music video. The vessels are infected. The vessels show signs of conformity, repetition, and echolalia. The vessels lose themselves and become The Idea.

They see, as you see, colored patterns that contain within enough information to bootstrap up to the full idea in the psyche. They hear, as you hear, the frequencies and patterns that make pliable the neural pathways in the brain. They feel, as you feel, the discomfort that makes the human, sane part want to Turn It Off. And yet, by the time the song is over, enough has been supplanted to press Play again.

¹ Thank you, Peter Watts, for gifting my mind the Euclidian Glitch!“

Thanks goes out to Voidthrone and their representation for the opportunity to share this song early. Scroll down to the YouTube embed below to finalize your descent… As always, support the worldwide experimental black/death metal underground and grab a copy this coming May 8th, 2026:

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Per the Press Release:

Seattle (WA) – Dissonant Blackened Death Metal quartet, Voidthrone, returns with Dreaming Rat, their most unhinged and trenchant record yet!

Structured as a three-part cosmic death ritual, Dreaming Rat follows a triptych of parallel arcs: a solar system burning through its lifespan, a civilization collapsing under its own complexity, and a parasite replicating itself across language, culture, and flesh. The band trades some of the prior atmospheric murk for a more immediate, frenetic mix—closer, sharper, and meaner.

Vocalist Zhenya Frolov delivers his most insane performance yet, retching through death-metal lows, black-metal shrieks, and ritualistic howls as the album spirals toward extinction. The listener is invited to drift calmly and unflinching through the maelstrom, like the dreaming rat on the album’s cover.

FFO: Imperial Triumphant, Deathspell Omega, Krallice, Ulcerate, Portal, and the absolute heat death of the universe.

Dreaming Rat will be released on May 8.

Pre-order:

https://voidthrone.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-rat

Track Listing:

Arc 2 – The vital present. A universe, a civilization, an idea flourishing into a promised infinity.

1. II-I. Homeless Animal

2. II-II. Morbid Seagull

3. II-III. Ren Omega

Arc 1 – The hopeful past. A maelstrom of violence and optimism.

4. I-I. Bergen

5. I-II. Dreaming Rat*

6. I-III. First Blood

Arc 3 – The silent future. An extinguished, lonely death of the physical, spiritual, and cognitive.

7. III-I. Surfing the Abyss

8. III-II. The Dying Squid

9. III-III. Worm Spiral

Credits:

Produced / Mixed / Mastered by Ronald Foodsack (Voidthrone).

Album Art: Kiri Yu (kiriska.com)

Accolades:

“Wild blackened death metal FFO Deathspell Omega, Krallice.”

– Flight of Icarus, Metal Trenches

“Disorienting, disturbing, and even terrifying…combining head-spinning intricacy, unsettling dissonance, and raw emotional intensity.”

– No Clean Singing

“A unholy hybrid of black metal and jazz.”

– Metal Epidemic

“Voidthrone are consummate masters of what I’ve taken to referring to as ‘Moral Distress Metal.’ They lurch from genre touchstone to genre touchstone, but that anxiety-inducing wrongness is always front and center.”

– Ghuughra (Bandcamp Review)

“Frantic death metal that feels like the bugs that always crawl under your skin.”
– Herman (Bandcamp Review)

Line-up:

Zhenya Frolov – Vocals, Japanese Otamatone.

Ron – Guitar, Jaw Harp.

Gavin Brooks – Fretless and Fretted Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Guitar Solos.

Josh Keifer – Drums, Vibraslap, Didgeridoo, Spoons. 

BIO:

Hailing from the rain-soaked muck of the Pacific Northwest, Voidthrone crafts dissonant blackened death metal that is as belligerent as it is meticulously arranged. Intentionally disorienting and feral, their unconventional music has evolved from the raw Spiritual War Tactics (2016) and the avant-garde churn of Kur (2018) to the sharpened, atmospheric density of 2022’s Metaphysical Degradation.

Discography:

Dreaming Rat (May 8, 2026).

Metaphysical Degradation (2022).

Kur (2018).

Spiritual War Tactics (2016).

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