Nothingness – Supraliminal
Release Date: 20th January 2023
Label: Everlasting Spew Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Dissonant Death Metal
FFO: Gorguts, Gojira, Morbid Angel, Iniquity.
Review By: Eric Wilt
Supraliminal is the sophomore release by dissonant death metal dealers Nothingness. Hailing from Minneapolis, Nothingness got its start in 2018 when vocalist Barclay Olson and multi-instrumentalist Alex Walstad joined forces to melt faces with their unique brand of metal that leans heavily on dissonant riffs and brooding atmosphere while never getting too far removed from the good-ol’ fashioned death metal of Morbid Angel and the death-doom of Incantation. When it was time to record album number two, Walstad wrote all of the music and played all of the instruments (including anvil, which is pretty badass) except drums—which were handled by Jason Hirt—while he and Olson both contributed lyrics. Since then, the band has been rounded out with Jon Grandel on guitar, Xen Hartzell on bass, and Erik Christianson on drums.
I want to start my review by saying something profound about Supraliminal, but eloquence fails me in the face of such a bludgeoning listening experience. Suffice it to say, Nothingness has created nine tracks of super-heavy death metal. At times they lean on caveman riffs like the one that opens the album on Curse of Creation. And if the song wasn’t heavy enough on its own, the production is so big on low end and crisp from top to bottom that listening to it is akin to sticking your head on an anvil and having some monster of a blacksmith swing the ol’ hammer down with all his might. Speaking of anvils, Walstad is not just a master of guitar, bass, and synth, but he also lays down a mean anvil, as can be heard on Catapulted into Hyperspace, which song also features a guitar solo that simulates with sound the feeling of actually being catapulted into hyperspace. It’s pretty gnarly.
Besides being super-heavy, Supraliminal is also full of brooding dissonance. There isn’t a single song on the album that gets too far away from the dissonant side of death metal, but a couple of standout tracks that are heavy on said dissonance are the aforementioned Catapulted into Hyperspace and Temple of Broken Swords (which is also monstrously heavy). Other songs such as Horrendous and The Anvil (yes, the anvil makes a reappearance) have more of an old-school death metal feel. To round it all out, at times Nothingness slows things down with some tasty death-doom such as that found in Festering Abstraction and even post-metal which can be heard on Beacon of Light. Overall, Supraliminal is a veritable smorgasbord of death metal styles. Always dissonant and always heavy, Nothingness has created a very enjoyable album that I am sure will win the young band many new fans. 
(4 / 5)
