Bandcamp Three guitarists in a six-piece band is either redundant or essential, and Void of Light land somewhere in between. Nick Collins, Simon Mather, and Marc Carey layer distortion and melody and texture into something that a two-guitar setup could not replicate, but whether the added density serves every song is a fair question. Asymmetries, the Glasgow band’s release on Ripcord Records, runs five tracks in fifty minutes. Every one of them passes the ten-minute mark or comes close. The blueprint is familiar: early Cult of Luna’s patient, grinding builds stretched across long runtimes. The craft is there. The question is whether the energy is.
The lyrics operate on a different frequency than most post-metal. Ali Lauder writes in a dense, almost archaic English that reads closer to poetry than to song: “whether mysteries be kept in placid song / to make their worth / so make their gain.” “The Passing Hours” opens the album with this kind of language, and it sets a tone that the music mirrors. The tempo sits mid-paced and deliberate, the guitars building controlled walls of distortion that never tip into chaos. The spectral balance is even, the mid-range thick but not muddy, and the low end present without dominating.
“Silver Mask” introduces the closest thing to a riff-driven structure on the record. The central section locks into a groove while the lyrics invoke fire and loyalty and a guide that “takes the hand / leads it on / sets it free.” The three-guitar arrangement pays off here most clearly: one guitar holds the root, another adds harmonic movement, and the third drifts between texture and melody. Collins mixed the album himself at 13 Studios, and the clarity he achieves across those layers is the record’s quiet achievement.
“Ends” is the shortest track at eight minutes and the heaviest. The opening riff grinds through a low-register pattern while Lauder delivers the album’s most direct writing: “all to fall and oft / so fall / forego and I will hold it all.” The song asks “where do the threads of belief coalign with realities made and unreal and denied?” and then answers with five minutes of escalating volume. Magnus Lindberg’s mastering at Redmount Studios keeps the dynamic range intact even at peak loudness, which is critical for music that builds this slowly.
“Still the Night Skies” and “Mirrorings” close the album as a pair, each over ten minutes, each working through repetition and accumulation rather than verse-chorus architecture. “Frail essence becoming sacred to the faltering / frail essence becoming shadow of our wisdom” repeats across “Mirrorings” like a mantra, and the intention is clear: the words should gain weight through iteration. Whether they do depends on how much patience you brought. Dan Irving’s bass anchors these longer tracks with a low-frequency presence that Stephen Wilkinson’s drumming builds around rather than over. The pieces are well-constructed, but the arc they trace feels like a story you have heard before told at a pace that assumes you have not.
The production favours a balanced, mid-focused sound with controlled crunch in the distortion. The three-guitar setup creates density in the 250-5000 Hz range without the mud that often accompanies layered guitar recordings. Bass frequencies are substantial and present but restrained enough to let the mid-range textures breathe. The overall loudness is pushed but retains headroom for the dynamic builds that the longer tracks depend on. The harmonic complexity is high, reflecting the interlocking guitar parts. The tempo stays consistent across the analyzed material, giving the album a steady, processional quality.
Standout tracks: “Ends” for the most concentrated heaviness on the record and the question at its core that the band answers with volume. “Silver Mask” for the three-guitar interplay at its most distinct. “Mirrorings” for the closing mantra that proves repetition is not laziness when the thing being repeated is worth hearing again.
Void of Light describe themselves as “six-piece post-metal from Glasgow,” and the record delivers exactly what that description promises. The production is clean, the writing is literate, the arrangements are careful. If you are deep in the post-metal tradition and want another record that does the thing well, Asymmetries will not disappoint. If you are looking for the moment where the formula breaks open and something unexpected comes through, you may still be waiting by the time “Mirrorings” fades out. The craft earns respect. The energy earns a shorter runtime.
