Excellent death metal bands are being belched out of the putrid UK soil left right and centre, and Vacuous marked themselves as ones to watch with 2020’s impressively vile ‘Katabasis’. With ‘Dreams Of Dysphoria’ they’ve not only made good on their promise but forged one of the year’s finest and most compelling death metal albums: a vast, sickening work that combines mood, immediacy and songcraft in brutally effective fashion. Riffs ooze and writhe like blind, limbless things greedily mouthing for food, while each vocal extrusion drips with sticky strings of slime. Though everything interlocks with gruesome precision, a glowering sense of atmosphere pervades – a sort of disorienting, Ligottian cloud that envelops the record without blunting the cruel, craggy edges or dulling its raw, punkish energy. It’s a knockout release from beginning to end: a brilliant, rotted symphony that makes its own distinctive mark while seeping gluily into the same festering pit inhabited by labelmates Undergang, Ataraxy and Malignant Altar.
