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Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2026-05-08 · 17:39 UTC

Voidthrone – Dreaming Rat Review By Grin Reaper

There’s a lot of weird shit floating around the metalsphere, and that includes Voidthrone’s newest addition, Dreaming Rat. The Seattle quartet has been kicking around for a decade, and in that time have released three prior platters of escalating lunacy. Without question, Dreaming Rat is Voidthrone’s most unhinged concoction to date, and a quick look at their Bandcamp credits gives prospective listeners a window into the alchemical ingredients they cook with, including Otamatone, conch shell, jaw harp, vibraslap, digeridoo, spoons, and a fretless bass. Throw in vocalist Zhenya Frolov’s deranged vocal stylings, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide manic expression of dissonant blackened death metal. With so many disparate components in Dreaming Rat’s stew, does Voidthrone soothe the savage beast or unleash a waking nightmare?

Listening to Dreaming Rat is a bit like experiencing an auditory fever dream, where disconnected fragments congeal into lurid, atonal anarchy. Voidthrone didn’t arrive at this sound overnight, though. Debut Spiritual War Tactics whipped and frothed with the restrained vitality of Krallice, and follow-up Kur added jazz-informed touches in the vein of Imperial Triumphant. Physical Degradation evolved Voidthrone’s sound, integrating more unconventional instrumentation and pushing the band’s songwriting past its comfort zone. On Dreaming Rat, Voidthrone takes the blueprint laid out on Physical Degradation and indiscriminately expands the range for strange. The result sees Frolov stretching his vocal performance into frenzied tirades, covering the gamut from Replicant’s vomitous barks to Sigh’s oddball deliveries. The instrumentation also gets exponentially wackier, as it conjures the rabid wrath of Pyrrhon along with the chaotic instincts of Afterbirth, resulting in an unpredictable romp to the end of the world.

At Dreaming Rat’s core, Voidthrone details the life and death of a solar system through bleak eras, segmenting the album into present, past, and future. The arcs are presented in that order, with each one comprised of three songs. The present describes the apex of a civilization, harnessing the promises forged upon the hopes and chaos of the past. Meanwhile, Voidthrone paints a grim outlook for the future, specifically calling out ‘an extinguished, lonely death of the physical, spiritual, and cognitive.’1 The lyrics throughout Dreaming Rat read like the demented ravings of a madman’s manifesto,2 and while I don’t think I could have divined the album’s overarching concept from them alone, reading them amplifies the bedlam Voidthrone has crafted on Dreaming Rat.

Writing music this lawless may seem haphazard, but over repeated listens, I’ve begun to glimpse the method to Dreaming Rat’s madness. Without question, everyone in Voidthrone earns their stripes. Ronald Foodsack’s guitars drench Dreaming Rat with warbling dissonance, perpetually in flux so that there’s never a riff or refrain to inhibit the music’s incessant lurch. Whether moving at frantic paces (“III-I. Surfing the Abyss”) or decelerating to a plodding crawl (“II-II. Morbid Seagull”), Ron’s six-stringed blitz never stalls. Additionally, Gavin Brooks contributes acoustic guitar and solos while manning the glorious fretless bass.3 Technical death metal has hogged the fretless bass for too long, and I’m glad Voidthrone has the stones to add it to disso metal’s tool chest. Tracks like “I-I. Bergen” and “II-I. Homeless Animal” showcase the character the instrument offers, bolstering the ever-shifting nature of Dreaming Rat. Drummer Josh Keifer grounds the band ably, locked into a supporting role that allows the other instruments to take center stage while he keeps things on the rails. Frolov’s feral vocals and the host of unconventional instruments further enrich Voidthrone’s distinctive identity, establishing what sounds like it could be the death throes of the universe.

What Voidthrone accomplishes with Dreaming Rat is fascinating and unique, and merits everyone’s attention. Sure, some songs could be trimmed to make such a scathing album a bit shorter and more palatable, and the three arcs could use some musical cues to distinguish songs thematically from one another, but Dreaming Rat is a crowning achievement for the band. Voidthrone’s psychedelic psychosis makes bold promises on paper and completely delivers in fact, and when I’m in the mood to get really weird with it, this will be the album I reach for.

Rating: Very Good!
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: May 8th, 2026

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GetMusic - Free Bandcamp Codes @[email protected] · 2026-04-30 · 08:10 UTC

Free download codes:

BÁL - Dög (Full-length)

"The cover talks for itself. You'll hear what you see."

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Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2026-04-23 · 16:46 UTC

Aversio Humanitatis – To Become the Endless Static Review By Thus Spoke

The thing I am most afraid of is losing my mind. The progressive destruction dementia wreaks upon a brain is upsetting enough to endure from the outside, but the horror of that brain potentially being mine is a thought that keeps me up at night. While not explicitly about dementia, To Become the Endless Static follows the disintegration of a person’s mind as “[a]ll pathways, dreams and connections to what once formed their identity spiral down, merging into the great nothing, the endless static.” It’s a frightening, abstract concept that naturally suits Aversio Humanitatis’ brand of freeform dissonant black metal, which here takes a turn for the still more intense and unsettling. The group have garnered a reputation for long rumination between releases, and though not everyone might agree, 2020’s Behold the Silent Dwellers demonstrated the fruitfulness of this approach with its nine-year-awaited greatness. Six years on, with the sophomore but a shadow in the nebulous past, the apparition of Endless Static portended greatness once more, in addition to a genuinely scary theme. I was only too happy to indulge my masochism.

Much like the march of time and an incurable disease, Endless Static does not wait until you’re ready before attacking. “Long Stretch the Shadows” threatens whiplash as it erupts off the start line with relentless percussion and tremolos bending at uncomfortable angles. It epitomises the shift in Aversio Humanitatis’ already extreme and dissonant style towards a still more complex, confrontational, and often faster version of itself, which dominates across the album. Rhythms shift more frequently, and the distortion wrought by the layering of agonised roars and churning riffs is more clamorous; even the slower aspects are more haunting. Endless Static sees a leaning into a chaotic splendour akin to a sped-up Patristic, a more acerbic Schammasch, rendered in a deceptively melodic, deeply atmospheric way that at turns also recalls Aeviterne and Selbst. But Aversio Humanitatis prefer to create their mournfulness and urgency by disguising it as dissonance in a way distinct from any of the above. Endless Static is a masterful distillation of this practice: a soundscape whose violently aversive face admits more honesty and beauty the more you allow it.

Endless Static doesn’t just embody its concept generally; it lives it viscerally. The lurching of discordant scales (title track, “Blackened Mold Marrow”), and repeated strip-back and surge in of percussion (“Long Stretch…,” “Collapsing into the Resonance”) is upsetting yet mesmerising. And its transformation into a stumbling sway (“Strange Angles,” “The White Noise is Calling”) elevates unease with doubt. Shuddering, multitracked screams, cymbals panting like laboured breaths, and disorienting rhythm and riff patterns (“Strange Angles,” “Blackened Mold Marrow”) express the nightmare of incurable confusion. The soft creep of a melancholic tremolo behind the recurrent tumbles of percussion, and the bleeding of their melody into the pervasive atmosphere (title track, “Collapsing…”) communicate the grief of loss and the fear of the future. These patterns develop with the runtime too: the tightness with which harmony is sealed into overtly cold guitar lines slowly loosens and vocals slip more frequently into a desperate, anguished wail, culminating in the stirring lead melodies and devastating resistance of closing duo “The White Noise…” and “Collapsing…” All the while, the terror-amplifying resonance of the vocals and sinister edge to the riffs never ceases to feel frightening. But Aversio Humanitatis’ ability to shape these dissonant waves of assault into something beautiful without compromising on this affecting frightfulness makes Endless Static greatly more compelling than it otherwise might have been.

That Aversio Humanitatis can communicate all this so compellingly in a mere 35 minutes makes it that much more impactful. The speed at which “Long Stretch…”‘s confrontational unease becomes the ardour-filled protest “Collapsing…” is upsetting—another metaphor perhaps. This brings me to my only real complaint about Endless Static, which is how short it is; though I suppose it’s better to have brilliance and be left hungry than have a flawed abundance. I must, more importantly, draw attention to the drumming—courtesy of J.H—that rivals last year’s Patristic in its tenacity, dynamism, and unhinged precision whilst being so ridiculously fast and expressive (“Blackened Mold Marrow” has my jaw on the floor). Its speed and violence play no small part in Endless Static’s horror. I am also sometimes drawn to wonder if vocalist A.M is actually undergoing some phantasmagorical transformation, so wild and terrifying are his howls.

Dissonant black metal bands and degenerative diseases operate in the shadows, but Aversio Humanitatis now, if never before, deserves all the light we can cast on them. But more likely that this hypnotically horrifying work will yank you violently into its darkness. Harrowingly inexorable even in its brevity, one can’t escape the draw To Become the Endless Static.

Rating: Excellent
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
Websites: Official | Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: April 24th, 2026