Bandcamp Death metal usually keeps its horror safely cartoonish, gore for gore’s sake, and part of what makes Vacuous compelling is that they point the camera at real things. In His Blood, the London band’s Relapse debut, is built around violence and voyeurism, vocalist Jo Chen turning the lens on horror films, serial killers, school shootings, toxic masculinity and the divide between the global north and south. Guitarist Michael Brodsky cites The Cure and Converge as readily as any death metal touchstone, and that outsider streak shows: this is writhing, angular, atmospheric death metal that refuses to sit still, and it is a good deal smarter than the average slab. The blood-drenched photograph of a filthy concrete room on the cover is horror of the everyday, not the fantastical, and that is exactly the record’s register.
The songwriting is the draw, and the band’s willingness to break their own momentum is what sets them apart. “Hunger” is the clearest example and a high point: it works a real macro-dynamic swing, the atmospheric passages given genuine space and headroom before the extreme sections clamp down, the guitars sliding from transparent, stereo-wide cleans into high-gain saturation. The closer “No Longer Human” pulls the same trick to even better effect, an undistorted, atmospheric mid-section around the three-and-a-half-minute mark opening a real dynamic breath in the middle of the density. “Contraband” is the tightest of the straight-ahead tracks, precise and mid-forward with a growling, lightly distorted bass anchoring the centre, and throughout the riffing stays legible even at blazing speed, which is the hard part.
The reservation is the master, and it is the modern death metal problem. In His Blood is pushed to maximum loudness, and the macro-dynamics pay for it: the sum compression and hard limiting flatten the peaks, the sound turns into a dense, pressurised wall with the natural room squeezed out, and on the fastest tracks the 2 to 5 kHz band overloads enough to fatigue on repeat plays. This is the Relapse-era, ultra-controlled low end and clipped highs that a lot of contemporary death metal shares, and taken as a genre norm it is far from disqualifying, the riffs and the drums stay defined and the aggression lands. But a record with this much dynamic writing in it would hit harder with a ceiling raised even slightly, because the quiet-loud contrasts the band clearly care about keep getting clipped at the top.
In His Blood is a ferocious, intelligent, genuinely distinctive death metal debut that earns the Relapse signing and the hype around it, a band who found their own space by dragging alt-rock and hardcore instincts into the genre without diluting the brutality. It is held back only by a loudness-maximised master flattening music that was written to breathe. For anyone who wants their death metal vicious but thinking, angular and atmospheric rather than merely fast, Vacuous are one of the most exciting new names in the style. Turn it up and brace.
Writhing, angular death metal with an alt-rock and hardcore streak, and a real willingness to break its own momentum. “Hunger” is a high point, working a genuine macro-dynamic swing where the atmospheric passages get space and headroom before the extreme sections clamp down, the guitars sliding from stereo-wide cleans into high-gain saturation. Closer “No Longer Human” pulls the same trick with an undistorted atmospheric mid-section opening a real breath in the density. “Contraband” is the tightest straight-ahead track, precise and mid-forward with a growling bass anchoring the centre, and the riffing stays legible even at blazing speed. The reservation is the master: pushed to maximum loudness, the sum compression and hard limiting flatten the peaks into a dense pressurised wall with the room squeezed out, and the fastest tracks overload the 2 to 5 kHz band enough to fatigue. Genre-standard modern-death loudness rather than a fatal flaw, but the dynamic writing would hit harder with the ceiling raised.
Standout tracks: No Longer Human, Hunger, Contraband
