Inanna – Void of Unending Depths
Release Date: 25th April 2022
Label: Memento Mori
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Blackened Death Metal, Technical Death Metal.
FFO: Sepultura/Morbid Angel (Per the band), Immolation, Gorguts.
Review By: Andy Spoon
In this third offering as a project, Chile’s Inanna seeks to extend its ethereal, abyssal death metal to higher levels with Void of Unending Depths, an LP released under label Memento Mori in April, 2022. In his own explanation of the record, Diego Ilabaca, Inanna’s songwriter, wanted to combine his influences from Sepultura and Morbid Angel to create Void of Unending Depths.
Some classic early death metal riffs break through the more-modern tech-death guitar at choice moments, à la Death and Morbid Angel, such as on track 2, Among Aqueous Spectres, absolutely showing that Llabaca’s intention to blend old-school and recent tech-death went fulfilled during the writing of the album. Many tracks enjoy that dance between each influence, giving proper respect for each respective element, and not painfully mixing them together in some type of remix that falls flat. Vocally, there are two present timbres, one low, the other, high, blending some black metal Nazgul screeches with the cookie-monster lows throughout the album.
Guitar and drums share the same thematic moments, each breaking into the OSDM and tech death together, which helps the overall tone to be conveyed more effectively. There are some projects that make genre-sandwiches wherein an OSDM guitarist furiously speed-riffs over 240bpm blast beats. The whole thing just doesn’t work out as often as some pie-in-the-sky genre benders like to think. Void of Unending Depths manages to make it all work without crossing the line into forcing two incompatible sounds together.
The album has some musical breakdowns in tempo and speed to allow space for some proggy-interludes between the shredding, dissonant cosmic evil, giving the listener a little space to reflect or notice the changes between sequences of thematic musical elements, as can be found on Far Away in Other Spheres, a track where you can really hear the Gorguts influence on Inanna’s guitar, as well as Underdimensional, a musically-charged track that uses dissonant minimalism and dynamic building and falling to convey the cartoonish-sounding horror-genre tone that absolutely carves the Lovecraftian influence across the staff.
From a production and recording standpoint, the record is largely mixed well. The vocals are even and forward, even somewhat discernable. The harmonic guitar leads chop through the mix to shift listener focus onto the music section at exactly the right intervals, leaving rhythm guitar slightly “back” of the mix to avoid making the overall sound too thick, and overwhelming the listener. This is a great technique that helps to convey the specific parts of the composition more effectively. It might even be proper to say that it is mixed more-similarly to a pop track in its use of compression and stereo dynamics between mix tracks.
Touting some of the conceptual influences in the Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror genre, Ianna blends the technical brutality of Death Metal with the cosmic, existential dread and horror from the likes of “Weird Tales Magazine” and The Call of Cthulu. Generally, when one thinks of this universe as an influence, visions of giant spectral cephalopod beings with nefarious intentions come to mind, all hope for the lowly human race sadly-dependent on the whims of a wily and callous pre-ancient deity-monster with no regard for the temporary nature of Earthbound life. Naturally, death metal seems to be a fantastic vehicle to convey those endemic fears of the existential nihilist.
There are some moments where the phrasing goes on a little too long, starting to lull the listener into a slight hypnosis, taking away from the otherwise-dreadful dynamic swings. If assisted by the delight of mind-altering substances, it can seem like some of the moments just go on and on perpetually. Without breaks between certain segments, it can get downright boring, as on track 5, The Key to Alpha Centauri. Nevertheless, on top of an already-impressive release catalog, Void of Unending Depths is a very-good album that shows Inanna is far from played-out in 2022.
(3.5 / 5)
