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VACUOUS
Dreams Of Dysphoria

Me Saco un Ojo / Dark Descent / F H E D (2022)
Rating: 9/10

Proof again that UK death metal scene is on the rise comes via the churning depths of London leper colony Vacuous. This shady bunch of gloom-mongers cast their spell of despair in 2020 with a cold, despondent and dragging demo which was followed by a five-song EP, Katabasis. They were a brace of releases which left followers gagging for more despondent waters to drown in, and boy have they delivered with this debut full-length.

Dreams Of Dysphoria is a wet flannel of manky, mouldy fibres draped over the brain and dragged over the scalp to leave a stinking cess-pit odour. These guys channel a Finnish style of coldness, but never is their barrage of brutality sacrificed, and neither is the foul air of gloom which hangs over this album like a sagging web of dew.

Yes, cavernous is the perfect word here to describe such death / doom whereby you get those recognisable Autopsy rambles of rankness (‘Body Of Punishment’) coupled with slower passages of putridity, and it’s these dragging, aching segments which we all love to wade though. To put simply this is ugly, primitive and above all, bludgeoning death metal that matches just about anything and everything put out over the last few years by similar pustulent acts.

What I really love about albums like this is the dreadful atmosphere it creates where surges of utter panic settle in when the blast beats emerge, and then there are the despairing vocal traits which shift from bleak, low end moans of misery to higher, dehydrated gasps of agony. When mid-tempo passages are sustained we get a Bolt Thrower-style of drudgery, but again the band shifts into far deeper and darker dimensions, one moment oozing the next gnashing, as on ‘Matriarchal Blood’, or the fusty retch of ‘Paranoia Rites’. It’s all stuffed with gloom, billowing black smoke and reaches into every orifice with its tentacles of horror.

Dreams Of Dysphoria is the inescapable swamp of evil I was hoping for and yet never could I have prepared myself for the after effects of its dismal drudgery.

Neil Arnold

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