There’s a lot to unravel and a lot to endure with Gutvoid’s first full-length, a monolithic slab of death-murk that weighs in at almost an hour. Favouring a glutinous, mid-paced lunge ensures things are deceptively easy to engage with, and the band’s knack for sinister, spidering melodies sweetens the deal yet further. Come a certain point, though, you realise you’re deep in the rotten bowels of the Earth and hopelessly lost: stumbling blind through labyrinthine catacombs, and possessed of the irrational certainty that every step is taking you down towards something ancient and hungry. Riff patterns wind and warp hypnotically, melodies blossom into fanged discords and a sense of doomed ambience pervades. There are progward leanings, but you never get the sense that the band are browbeating you with them, instead they are subtly dripped into the poisonous churn and left to quietly ferment. While parallels to classics like Demilich, Incantation and Gorguts can definitely been drawn, ‘Durance Of Lightless Horizons’ perhaps best nestles alongside the likes of Vacuous, Krypts and Ataraxy: newer acts that are steeped in the knowledge of the old ways but keen to forge their own paths, no matter the depths they have to brave.
