As anyone who has spent a great deal of time there will testify, the mind is an inhospitable place. It neither forgives nor forgets, a wasteland where the ruins of bad decisions are strewn across a barren and unforgiving terrain. It’s this landscape that Umus evoke with such horrifying clarity on their debut Voidlit, a cold and unrelenting trudge through funeral doom, dark ambient and abject misery. Formed of members of Russian post-metallers Crust, as well as the enigmatic E. on vocals, it tracks the descent of a nameless protagonist into absolute despair, their downfall depicted across five lengthy slabs of slow, morose heaviness that offer up sparse glimpses of light along the way but ultimately grasping for hope.
Even on opener ‘Ghost of Grief’, there is little comfort to be found. V.’s guitar creates an atmosphere that feels both familiar and eerily alien, sparse chords that rumble and echo while glimmers of melody surface as if in the distance, a momentary speck of light as cold, harsh winds batter the mind and soul. E.’s vocals are equally ominous, a hollow, cavernous roar that feels nigh-bestial, yet the few inclusions of clean vocals offer up a peek into the mind that is gradually collapsing. ‘Harbinger of the End’ feels more solemn in comparison though when it does kick in, it hits like Saint Vitus being played at quarter speed through speakers immersed in tar. ‘Oblivion’ becomes even more formless and abstract, the dividing line between melody and crushing atmospherics blurring as the drums of R. flit between light, jazzy flourishes and crushing, slow-motion brutality, while the two-part conclusion of ‘Voidlit’ spreads itself out across 25 minutes of claustrophobic doom and tense, protracted riffing.
While this could have been presented as one all-consuming deluge of gloom, Umus do manage to pepper through a few moments of respite. Sometimes it just involves letting the listener breathe, E. reverting back to a more humane tone as his clean notes offer glimpses of longing, or maybe yearning for a time before things went so awry for the protagonist, but more often than not it’s V.’s liberal use of melody that enriches the album. The melodies are faint but filled with life, burrowed a little deep in the mix as it to remind us that hope does exist when one knows when to pay attention and where to seek it.
Voidlit is the creation of a band who may just be starting out but already have a fully formed idea of where they want their sound to go and how to achieve it. Through subtlety, atmosphere and a canny production that somehow makes their compositions claustrophobic and as vast as a barren, alien landscape, they have created something that will draw you deep into the abyss and leave you gasping for air.
