Gutvoid – Durance of Lightless Horizons
Release Date: 23rd September 2022
Label: Blood Harvest
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Doom Metal.
FFO: Temple of Void, Ataraxy, Desolate Shrine, Hooded Menace.
Review By: Rick Farley
The mixture of death and doom metal usually proves to be a potent mix of entrancing brutality. The idea of enslaving the listener with airy melancholic melodies and then bashing them into oblivion with sheer heaviness is definitely not a new thing in the metal world, but it’s always been highly effective. The debut album Durance of Lightless Horizons from Toronto, Canada’s Gutvoid is the newest genre offering for this cavern soaked, swarming pit of devouring slimy tendrils.
Formed in 2019, the ascent of Gutvoid has been nothing short of meteoric. These Toronto natives digitally released their debut EP Astral Bestiary, catching the attention of Swedish label Blood Harvest, who then released it physically in 2020. The bands momentum continued with an even bolder digital single “Forbidding City Beneath the Crypt” and took part of a four-band split on Four Dimensions of Auditory Terror underlining Gutvoid’s oozing mind-mangling death/doom roots. The stage was this set for their inevitable debut full length.
The highly anticipated and ominously titled Durance of Lightless Horizons is set to unearth its enormous, heaving tentacle to all its beguiled and unaware sufferers. The hefty weight of the album is felt throughout its entirety, never relenting the suffocating atmosphere. Sounding massive; the walls of distortion and crushing might come from infusing two powerful sides of the metal spectrum. Both equally effective in enticing with monolithic rhythm sections and brooding pace, creating both yearning and malice. Slow tempo old school death metal chugging and churning its way out of the quicksand by way of deep growls, muscular heavy riffs, thick basslines, and pummelling drums. This is combined with enough droning melodies, long noted sludginess and smoky melancholic clarity to amalgamate a Lovecraftian creature gargantuan enough to devour whole worlds. It’s enslaving grip is spread out over six songs and fifty-three minutes, with the shortest song being around six minutes and the longest being over fifteen minutes. The album is linear in motion and very patient, taking its time with the listener, ensuring polarizing augmented carnage. A journey full of immersive despair and suffering through gloomy harmonies, dour melodies, and immense heaviness.
Video single In Caverns it Lurks is a mid-tempo stomper full of cavernous death metal riffage and monstrous growling. The bits of doom careen in with spiralling guitar melodies and sprawling chords resonating out into the darkened abyss. The track blends the shapes of death metal and melancholic doom metal, easily coercing the listener to drop their guard only to get hammered by the onslaught of cleaving riffs. The powerful drums, groove, and blast into a frenzy alongside the hefty bass guitars underneath worming towards you. Just a small, terrifying example of what’s to come from these murk drenched ruminations that fill this entire album.
The production on Durance of Lightless Horizons is phenomenal. The sense of eerie airiness with the use of smoky layers of distortion and gloominess does not affect how clean everything sounds together. It sounds murky but with tremendous clarity that actually enhances the organic feel and gives real weight to the record. It lives and breathes with encompassing sinister tones.
The thing that’s most impressive to me, is that this is the bands debut album. Durance of Lightless Horizons sounds refined enough to be from a band well into their careers. The album feels fully realized to the point of blissful achievement. The level of musicianship and song crafting here is astounding. I, for one, cannot wait to see what’s in store for this Canadian death/doom quartet.
Gutvoid shines in old school death metal swagger swamped within the confines of doom filled atmosphere, finding extreme balance between bone crushing and foggy spellbinding desolation. Easy recommend. 
(4 / 5)
