New addition to the collection + review of @predatoryvoid - SEVEN KEYS TO THE DISCOMFORT OF BEING:
What is metal music? I vividly recall an uncle of mine, who is also a musician raised on the boundaries of self imposed classical music rigidness, patronizing me when I was a kid, telling me that the bands I enjoyed were “just a phase”. Well, lifetime is just a phase, innit? You are born, streamlined into functioness, you pay taxes and then you die. I was raised on 90’s metal. And then I became sick of it - not because it was a phase - mainly because I grew tired of the narrow minded fundamentalism that was pretty common amongst Black Metal musicians throughout the 90’s and 00’s. I grew up listening to a shitolad of different music, therefore their rules would never be accepted by a person with my background, so I detached and lost interest and embarked onto experimentalism and indie folk. Both came from a very genuine and purer place in my view. However, throughout that period, I missed something - the means to express feelings that could be classified as dark, gruesome and inherent to mankind. I have huge respect for metal music since its inception until the present days. I can appreciate the intricacies of each decade - the aggressiveness, the lyrical content, the artistic vision and mainly the brutality of the music. The need to express darkness comes from a very ancient era and some of my contemporary peers have found their way into this type of music.
As a teenager - and as a proper rebellious teen should do - satanic imagery and anti religion lyrical content were very much up my alley. Nowadays, not so much. I prefer lyrics equally dark but more surreal, more visceral, more human. Human existence is filled with pain and suffering and metal music thrives from it. Within every niche and genre there are bands that excels in departing from the clichés that eventually drown a genre.
After my reconciliation with metal music - after a 10 year hiatus . I had the opportunity to watch Amen-Ra performing an awesome gig at Amplifest. Since then, I kept an eye on the band and its member’s side projects, being particularly fond of Oathbreaker and Absent in Body. Now that you know my relationship with metal, let’s get straight to the point: PREDATORY VOID. I bought this vinyl using a very old technique that involves going to a proper record store and letting the cover art speak to you, so it spoke. Nevertheless, since it’s 2024 and I didn’t want to spend money badly, I did a background check on the band only to realize it involved Lennart Bossu from Amen-Ra, so I gave it a go.
PREDATORY VOID’s music lives in the realm of contemporary metal. It’s not revivalism. It drinks obviously from references and brings it further. The music is dense, heavy, still, bleak and nostalgic at certain points. That goes along with the lyrical content that seems to come from a very personal state of mind, at certain points touching surrealism but mainly visceral in the sense of expressing discomfort and pain. Anxiety and anger. Hatred and sorrow. It’s 2024 - no one is impressed with corpse painting and themes about satan. This comes from a very real place and it is as humane as possible.
Favorite tracks: GROVEL; *(STRUGGLING..) and SHEDDING WEATHERED SKIN.
8/10
