Look, I’ll freely admit that I listen to and love some truly pretentious death metal. Hell, I ranked Ingurgitating Oblivion’s last album as my seventh favorite in 2024, and that album has its head so far up its ass that it popped back out of its neckhole while shrinking its spine into a Jimothy monster. The world, however, requires balance. I need music that’s barely graduated elementary school as much as I need the PhDs in my life. Minneapolis’ Nothingness is here to say “fuck school!” and beat you with a textbook rather than read it.
“Skull Evulsion” is our most primitive effort that spends most of its time going at a relatively feral speed and sports a fantastic echoing BLEGH right when you need it. “Trenchant Glunch” starts with a stuttering beatdown before firing off some wonderfully violent and layered tremolos supported by potent blasts, along with a breakdown that has a rather delightful bit of a bounce to it. The aptly titled “Incredible Violence” marches through your ears with a militant start but unloads the album’s best strut-savy riff around the one-minute mark. “Umbral Spear” spends a few second being fancy with a synth, but that small moment of breathing room makes churning guitar work all the more impactful when it returns. The guest lead on that track is also a nice touch.
Truly, vocalist Barclay Olson is the star of the show. He consistently switches up what he’s doing add a lot of flavor to each song. He has some strong bellow and raspy highs, but he gets downright vomitous at times. The layered vocal outro on “Incredible Violence” sounds like someone falling into a hellvoid; He’ll intentionally reduce enunciation to get these gnarly sounds like he’s choking on his own vomit; and my favorite moment is late on “Trenchant Glunch” when it sounds like someone is shoving a wad of cotton balls down his throat like this Godzilla gif:
Where Nothingness struggles a bit is trying to reach beyond their strengths. Three of these nine tracks float around the seven-minute mark. Closer “Novus Hegemonikon” is the best of the three. It opens with some bongos and wooden frog instrument sounds to set the stage that we’re shifting toward the end. From there, the song effectively builds on itself and continues to bring some new, but not outlandish or ill-fitting elements and ideas into the fold. The practice of a slightly longer closer that tries some new things is a well-practiced approach across metal and works quite well here. “Vanquishing Providence” and “Divine Irresponsibility,” on the other hand, don’t work quite so well, in no small part because they are sat right next to each other in the middle of the album. Neither song is offensive on its own, but they have similar tempo swings and neither one really comes across like a particularly cohesive song that justifies its length; they each feel like some cool parts sewn together and that makes the middle of the album drag a little bit. Godslaughter is not ruined by this, but the experience is dampened a bit.
I guess what I would say is, there’s no need for these boys to be reaching for an associate’s degree when crafting their next album. Sure, audit a few classes and weave in those learnings a bit here and there with songs like the closer, but Nothingess is most impactful when they’re tearing up high school diplomas and smooshing faces into goo on the playground to make their album art.
