In His Blood

It is getting harder and harder to keep up with all the great new bands in the death metal scene. But keep up we must. As previously advertised on numerous occasions, the UK scene has been flourishing for the last few years, to the point where big metal labels are beginning to snap up some of its hottest properties. When it comes to dirty, old-school death metal with a refreshingly perverse twist, London’s VACUOUS have been leading the charge in Britain for a while, and their partnership with Relapse Records makes complete sense. From their abominable debut EP “Katabasis” onwards, they have demonstrated a refined, intuitive grasp of what makes filthy, underground extremity so enduring, and an eerie knack for allowing old-school purity to be newly violated in all manner of foul ways. The quintet’s “Dreams Of Dysphoria” debut was embraced by miserable old bastards and fresh-faced enthusiasts alike, and “In His Blood” can only amplify the clamor, particularly now that VACUOUS have found a suitable home.

One thing that seems to bind most of the UK’s newer death metal bands together is a refusal to simply trot out the approved basics. Not that there is anything wrong with directly aping DISMEMBER circa 1993, but bands like CELESTIAL SANCTUARY, COFFIN MULCH and now VACUOUS are pooling a significantly different set of influences from the ones that inform most overtly retro-minded death metal. As a result, this fantastic record brings the best of old and new together, with the important caveat that the newer ingredients are all of unknown and slightly troubling origin.

VACUOUS are monstrously heavy, as any self-respecting death metal band should be, but their songs also have an agility and a turbulent, hypnotic sound to them that (I’ll be honest) warms the heart of an ageing metalhead. The opening title track encapsulates what the Londoners are peddling, with dense, rolling waves of hellish riffing flooding into some aberrant void, and frontman Jo Chen‘s lobotomized gargle echoing into the impenetrable dark. “Stress Positions” makes the same point again, with several riffs that wear their ’90s influences with pride, and several more that could have been belched up directly from the bowels of the underworld.

With respect to all those who make them, death metal albums can occasionally succumb to a lack of imagination. There is nothing inherently wrong in just releasing ten songs that fit the remit and leaving it at that, but the records that stick in the memory are very often the ones that connect on a deeper level. For all its unsavoriness and implied gore, “In His Blood” is a shrewdly conceived atmospheric journey too. Songs like the NECROPHAGIA-like “Hunger”, with its noir movie ambience and black metal bite, lead into the horrified, hell-for-leather, arcane tech-death of “Flesh Parade”, and on to the simmering psilocybin doom-stew of “Public Humiliation”; with the common thread of VACUOUS‘s excoriating, old-school spirit holding it all together. It is all so convincing that they wander casually into gothic post-punk territory on “Immersion” and it barely raises a cynical eyebrow. Instead, it simply adds to the richness and freshness of what is a truly exceptional sophomore effort.

As they demonstrate with their customary bug-eyed intensity on the closing “No Longer Human”, VACUOUS are a no-bullshit death metal at heart. Fortunately, “In His Blood” is proof that they are also much weirder and much more exciting than that. This new golden era of death gets more exciting by the week.