Full Album Stream: Nothingness – Supraliminal
As I started listening to this album in order to prepare this post, I recognized the first song and suspected that perhaps it had previously been covered in these very two-ply pages. As I discovered, some bunghole had indeed premiered a video for the rollicking “Curse of Creation” back in November ‘22. Now, said bunghole returns to deliver unto you a stream of Supraliminal, death metal outfit Nothingness’ sophomore album, out today from Everlasting Spew Records. Hop on in, the nothing’s fine.
Don’t think that my memory lapse is due to anything other than the smoothness of my brane. Nothingness’ greatest strength, and one that is crucial for this kind of expansive death metal, is memorability. They achieve this trait through both tight songwriting and a sprinkling of sounds you wouldn’t expect to hear on this kind of record. As I said in its video premiere, the lead track’s opening riff is a real boot-scootin’ boogie. There’s a moment in the middle of “Inviolate Viscera” where all the deathly bludgeoning falls away into a quiet, sarcastic little tumble that actually blends really well rhythmically with the blasting it gives way to. “Temple of Broken Swords” opens with a black metal riff, sees some chaotic scraping for a few seconds, and ends with the kind of bittersweet emotive melody you usually only find in melo-bm.
While I could have used more of these moments of variety in an album so dense and dark, they help distinguish the band from acts with similar ambitions to bigscreen death metal grandiosity, and their riffs are nothing to scoff at either. Nothingness taps into the expansive dark moods of other bands with genre modifiers such as “dissonant” and “atmospheric”, but their journeys into the dissodeath gravity well from which no groove can escape is always tethered to the known by a memorable riff around which the song spirals. This approach puts them in league with bands like Altars—standing a little ahead of them in terms of accessibility—and Gorguts, hold the skronk.
I personally would like just a little more daylight in here, but it’s a great overall package, and probably my favorite release from this month so far, one that I think will stay in rotation for a good while. Consider dropping 6 euros so these Minnesotan party boys can keep going ham on their beloved Hamm’s, don’cha knöwww.
