Arisen as a weathered heap within a near-dead realm Brussels, Belgium-based experimental/post-black metal quartet EMPTINESS build atop the languid catatonia of recent years with darker textured mutation per this curious seventh full-length album. All but titled in direct follow up to the band’s breakthrough 2014 record ‘Nowhere Speaks‘ manifests as a sequel twelve years beyond, characterized as if a malformed creature re-emerging from the froth of evolution, bug-eyed and creeping the field with its slinking din. While the material herein doesn’t achieve the heavier, riff-driven station of its quasi-predecessor the band find boon in their unusual drapery of chilled atmoblack/post-black float within tripped, beat-backed deterioration.

Emptiness formed circa 1998 between bassist/vocalist Jérémie Bézier and guitarist Olivier J.L.W. both of whom were better known for their station in post-millennium Enthroned before this band became its own shapeshifting phenomenon. Their first demo CD-r (‘Eternal Rising‘, 2000) sported a blackened death metal style and featured their first of five different drummers over the year, Khapth, who’d stuck around ’til their debut LP released. The ‘Necororgy‘ (2002) demo offers a better approximation of the realm explored on ‘Guilty to Exist‘ (2004) where shades of Immolation, Aeternus and even a few of the oddball heavy metal/grindcore stoked spasms of their demo era were better realized. With each release the band built momentum away from standard blackened death tumult, standing out for sounding like Napalm Death one moment and Oranssi Pazuzu the next under a sort of blanket of muddy sound and technical slugging grooves (see: ‘Oblivion‘, 2007). That was both the realization and exhaustion of their interest in death metal and the catalyst for an avant-garde take on post-black metal adjacent sounds to arise some years later when they’d signed to Dark Descent Records.

You don’t need to know where Emptiness came from to enjoy what they’re doing now but their full discography is a far wilder ride when viewed downstream of their blackened death metal roots. The band’s true in-betweener, their most ‘stuck between realms’ action, is the avant-garde caustic poisoning of ‘Error‘ (2012) an album I’d hated for about a month before buying it, ultimately being won over by the obnoxious, brazen nature of its movements in an era of increasingly surrealistic extreme metal applications; The general metalgazing public discovered the band through what is likely their biggest record to date in ‘Nothing but the Whole‘ (2014), a grooving and growling atmospheric metal record with its own form of quasi-industrial metal + jazzy weave to its undulations. It was an admirably “going for it” shot in the dark type of record of varying success from my point of view but that’d been original for its time. If the only provenance you gear up for ‘Nowhere Speaks‘ with is that fourth album you’ll be well set as it intends to pick up right where that record left off.

If you are squarely an extreme metal fan and have no interest in darkwave, experimental electronic music and other bases covered by Emptiness‘ work on albums number five and six, those two can potentially be side-stepped in advance of ‘Nowhere Speaks‘. This isn’t so much for the sake of shelving those records in disgust, you should definitely check out how far they took things on ‘Not For Music‘ (2017), but the subject of today is an intentional linkage between the band’s 2014 breakthrough and this new album, basically a second chapter in all but name. If you’re not convinced outright then swing over to “Lowland“, witness the abrupt cut-off at the end of that song, and drop right into “Nothing but the Whole (Part 2)”, an intro which kicks off this album. Within that minute-long intro they’ve finished the infamously unfinished thought ‘Nothing but the Whole‘ cut off twelve years ago.

Have Emptiness, a band foundered on transformative authorship, willingly “devolved” in the process of realizing ‘Nowhere Speaks‘? That thought only checks out if you view extreme metal borne performance, sound design and technique as lesser-than, void of transformation by default. Additional guitars from Simon L. (Possession) and drumming from Laye Louhenapessy (Abysmal Descent, Putrid Offal) offer no such devolution here as the thumping post-metallic electro-industrial bop the band are known for takes on a modest application of atmospheric black metal characteristics. The pump of the full band in action arrives in this sense via “The Threat” as it hits like a cut from the first half of ‘Kosmonument‘. As the opener’s kick builds in layers Bézier‘s growling speech resembles the ouevre he’d developed between albums number four and five: Whispered, spoken and snarled expression in a sort of disturbed deadpan cadence. Where the band are picking back up from should be clear outright but where they’ve evolved that sound will be crystalline by the time the song has finished.

Presented in seeming non-linear conversation and arriving without direct framing ‘Nowhere Speaks‘ should rightfully prompt the more inquisitive-eared, active listener with the choice to either steep in the disorientation of the following events or go and seek what provenance exists. When I’d first encountered the title track (“Nowhere Speaks“) the whispering trip-hop braced post-black estrangement of the song struck me as absurdly stated, a hissing annoyance with a bap behind it, ’til I’d gone back and rifled through ‘Nothing but the Whole‘ and began to view this album as a less intense chapter two built atop those aging vibes. In this sense the character that Emptiness had embodied on that previous album is believably reincarnated here but not without having been affected by time, and I think that continuity will particularly stoke the minds of fans who’d stuck around in the interim most. From my point of view the ~8.5 minute “Words of Wind” is the song that most fully delivers upon the hazy, psychedelic post-metal distemper of this albums suggested predecessor. Side A kind of gets there.

Though I’d tired of the ear licking hiss of the vocals by the time “When the Whole Arrives” kicked off Side B the second half of ‘Nowhere Speaks‘ generally reaches for a broader variety of tempo, some heavier movements, and pulls into the atmospheric/post-black metal side of things more often. “The Clash of Forces” may be short and linearly set but it generally reveals all of these suggested textures and techniques in its three minute step through. I have to admit I’d wished they’d pushed these compositions into more interesting territory overall, especially coming off of records by Trelldom and Voidstar Nocturnal earlier this year, but Emptiness have been all about the low-key, eerie slump of it all for some time now. The same whispered speech keeps rasping, the throb of closer “All for Nothing” hits a bit like a post-black vision beyond “The Threat”, and all ends up feeling like some kind of meaningful progression as it wraps up. They even made sure to cut off the last song prematurely and leave the ear hanging on what seems to be a build into another piece.

If you haven’t dug Emptiness since 2014 and kept up there isn’t much here set to spin your head ’round back in their direction. For the folks who’d found ‘Nothing but the Whole’ as the defining moment from the band you’ll get something similar here but certainly not a usurpation by my measure. Despite the return of extreme metal aesthetics/expression on some level they’ve not managed anything quite as riff driven or complex herein, only reintroduced darker textures into their work. In fact the riff count for this entire album is likely outpaced by a single song of theirs from the past (such as “Behind the Curtain”) so, think along the lines of differently angled sequel upon approach. Though most of my interest in the band fell off in 2017 I’d found ‘Nowhere Speaks‘ a satisfyingly surreal return, something familiar enough in wavelength to recognize after so many years but also an entirely different beast built from its composite parts. A moderately high recommendation.

---