Bongripper have been making long, wordless, extremely heavy music from Chicago since 2005, and Empty represents them operating at the peak of a form they’ve spent nearly two decades developing. Four tracks: “Nothing,” “Remains,” “Forever,” “Empty.” Titles that function as a sentence. No lyrics, no vocals, no explanation. Just the riffs.
“Nothing” opens with a patience that earns its runtime, the kind of doom that understands that time itself is a compositional element, that the space between notes matters as much as the notes. The riff that eventually arrives does so with the weight of something earned rather than simply delivered. “Remains” accelerates slightly, introducing a rhythmic urgency that sits underneath the drone without displacing it, and this tension between movement and stasis is what the album uses as its primary structural tool.
“Forever” is the album’s centerpiece, the longest and most developed track, moving through several distinct phases without ever losing the thread of what the band is building toward. By the time “Empty” arrives, the album has done enough work that its arrival feels like resolution rather than just conclusion. The final minutes, where everything drops away to near-silence before the riff returns one last time, is the album’s most powerful moment, and it works precisely because of everything that came before it.
The guitar and bass tones are exactly what you need for this style of music: thick, resonant, with the kind of natural sustain that comes from the right combination of tube amplification and patience. Nothing is over-produced, the drums are close and physical, the strings droning with a warmth that drone-doom sometimes sacrifices for pure weight. Bongripper understand that the heaviness they’re after is as much about texture as it is about volume.
Standout tracks: Forever, Nothing, Empty
If you have not listened to Bongripper, Empty is both a perfect entry point and a record that rewards returning listeners with everything they’ve come to expect: patience, precision, enormous riffs, and a nihilism so committed it crosses back into something that feels almost like honesty.
