Band: VOLUPTAS
Country: Czech Republic
Title: Towards the Great White Nothing
Label: MetalGate
Year: 2020
Style: Experimental Black Death Metal

Review:
They waste no time these 5 Czech blacksters, and this debut album of their dives straight into fast, brutal and somehow chaotic Black Metal only to find calmer (yet as abrasive as it started) waters by the end of the first track. Only 5 tracks and half an hour of playing time make this album, but it all sounds so dense and compact that it makes sense for this material to be named a full-length, I think stretching it for more than that would have been a gamble for a debuting band. Still, opening the album with the two tracks that are the least impenetrable, the least catchy from the lot, is again a gamble. Towards the Great White Nothing opens up and evolves through this half an hour, so that the end is quite far from the beginning, maybe that's how they intended it to be, for the album to grow on the listener, and the end, the second part of the last track is demented in its whole, a jazzy, sax-infused psychedelic passage that feels like you're being taken through the bowels of hell. I'd say the band takes traditional Black and Death Metal and throws in as much experimental sounds and structures as they can, you'll even hear some Punk rhythms at times, so it's not all straight forward massacre, but for the most part it is, haha. All in all this is an interesting album, not fit for everyone, that's for sure, but well thought and designed in its chaos. Not sure why, because I'm quite used to it, but the one word that comes to mind after the audition is: extreme. Released in classy digipak CD format with 16 pages booklet by MetalGate. Try ot out!
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: 8/10

Contact:
voluptas.bandcamp.com
metalgate.cz