
Some of their songs have interesting ideas, the full-throttle blast beats accompanied by punky riffs and audible bass guitar create a brutal reverb in the opening song “In His Blood”. The guitars on the album unleash wicked riffs. Vacuous opts for an organic sound, and the guitars have a powerful grip on aggression. The album’s raw production is coated in a thick reverb, and the riff-work injects plenty of thrashy and punk grooves.
“Stress Positions” highlights the rumbling force of the drums and the bass guitar, despite the direct influences from bands such as Autopsy and Obituary we get something quite different from the traditional death metal bands. Infusing the dynamics of death and thrash metal, Vacuous musical approach takes the obscured style of the genre and molds it with atmospheric guitars; you can hear the slow hooks that will give you the chills.
The music plunges into raw, energetic, and speedy death metal, the guitar chugging sounds brutal, especially when the lead guitar section comes in and the ferocious percussion begins blasting. “Hunger” is one of the highlight tracks, it starts with slow guitar chords and chattering words; these slow moments inject some dark and vicious feeling.
Each song has some old-school death metal riffs, thus, Vacuous maintains the infectious, fast blistering tempos encrusted with wicked vocals, it’s undeniable that the thrashing brutal tempos have a grotesque amalgam of punk and death metal.
The pummeling explosion and the guitar barrages in “Flesh Parade” fall between these two genres, when such moments come the head-banging riffs maintain the frenzy levels. Buzzy bass lines with some thunderous percussion lead to some vicious riffing, the death metal growls arouse from the background, and blasting drums that violently whip.
The slow malevolence manifest in the song “Public Humiliation”, the guitars craft a thrilling work and bordering on atmospheric sensation, the elaborated composition offers something dark and twisted. The elements in the sophomore come together in cohesion resulting in a stellar performance, this is because Vacuous has brought us something gnarly, dark, and fresh material to appease your hunger.
There are also many influences taken from bands like Napalm Death, and this is perhaps what makes the album so varied in its composition, their uncanny ability and penchant for dark atmospheric riff work is another stellar aspect of the band.
“Contraband” and “Immersion” are among my favorite songs in the album. The post-punk elements are distinguished in such songs with the thrilling rhythm adding a slab of brutality these qualities, however, show the band’s knack for exploring new musical grounds beyond modern death metal.
The latter song sounds very similar to the Norwegian death metal Molested, the band shows an old-school aspect, and proves the extreme exposure to original death metal acts like Obituary, Autopsy, and Molested are some of the few bands that came to my mind when reviewing this album.
The songwriting oozes some air of experimentation, and you can hear these awkward inventions, however, “In His Blood” has a duration of thirty-two minutes, but Vacuous’ utmost fascination with the sophomore album ensures a genuine song structure intending to cement a niche.
The longest track in the album is the six-minute closing song “No Longer Human” which transitions to wickedness, the drums utilize some proper double bass kicks layered with some evil black metal growls fitting perfectly in the morbid mid-paced style that conjures relentless brutality.
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REVIEW SCORE
8 | Vacuous’ sophomore “In His Blood” is an interesting mix of assorted elements curated from post-punk, death metal, atmospheric dark metal, and hints of black metal, this is undoubtedly one of the strongest releases of the year. |
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