Review by Jeger on July 22, 2024.

Through blackened storm clouds raining hot acid rain o’er The Abyss we traverse - its depths rank with primordial post-humanity: vortexes, sin and heavy as fucking balls death/black metal done the Dutch way, and crafted with malice intended. From out of Holland - the land of tulips and those stupid wooden shoes - come Deathless Void, and they’ve ripped from out of the fabric of black metal’s most brutal macrocosm their debut, The Voluptuous Fire Of Sin, LP, set to drop on September 20, 2024 via the bastardly Iron Bonehead. 

Just a much more refined and dynamic version of bands like Blasphemy and Black Witchery. Same intestines-pulverizing brutality, obviously magnified by much more modern recording techniques and set off by fine vocals as opposed to those wretched belches and grunts. Put together with more talent/vision and still beholden to Him in all of his infernal majesty. Throughout the entirety of towering, crack-the-skies album cuts like 'Vortex Climax', you’ll absorb like black goat semen into sacred hymen, larger-than-existence riffs and mammoth blast-beats as if a band of fucking giants recorded this thing! Snare like a barrel and guitar tonality fit for Galactus! You know, most of the obnoxious shit I hate about blackened death… Halfway in and it’s a dud, at least for this ole boy. So LOUD and so poorly mixed that everything just blends together into a shit-storm of miserably-produced music. 

Hang the producer… Epic fail and would’ve been a decent album if it weren’t for such poor engineering. The bass vulgarly resonates through everything, and all phases are at odds with themselves at hemispheric levels; raining down migraine-inducing gales of machine-like distortion. I’m all about some sin and the ecstasy associated with it, but this just feels like one of those creepy German BDSM black metal albums - something to commit murder to as opposed to the blessed warmth of basking in the ecstasy of sin under the loving gaze of His Infernal Majesty. The interlude, 'Iside', provides some much needed depth and an air of dark divinity to it all, but a mere precursor to more chaos but in a not so good way as 'Burning Shapes Without Form' unfolds; ever-reminding us of how special this record could’ve been. Impressive stuff but why? What was the producer thinking? Let’s ruin a perfectly good record by making it sound as if it was recorded inside of a vacuum chamber? 

Contemporary BM is a slippery slope indeed, and one must tread carefully when attempting to modernize something as traditional as black metal. The result may just be something grotesque. There are some finer points that deserve some credit: the unique and zone-out-inducing intro to the opener, 'Psychedelic Warfare', the Entombed-worshipping 'Crossing The Threshold' that will take you back to the glory days of “Left Hand Path” and the majestically arranged closer, 'Curse Upon You', with its complex harmonies and thrash-hearty riffs. Devoid of a little something called heart & soul; two characteristics that shouldn’t necessarily define all black metal records, but definitely one that so unabashedly delves into the realms of sin and of ecstasy. Everything here just feels too industrial and without the textures and modesty of what I consider to be true Satanic BM. Oh what could’ve been… 

Rating: 5 out of 10