For me, Dark Descent Records has always been more than just a record label. It's one of the very few labels I trust almost unconditionally. Their catalog has introduced me to dozens of outstanding albums, but two releases from the same year—2014—stand above all the others: "Lunarterial" by Swallowed and "Nothing But The Whole" by Emptiness.

"Nothing But The Whole" remains not only my favorite album by the Belgian band, but also one of the most original extreme metal releases of the last two decades. Released through Dark Descent Records, it was far more than just another black/death metal album. Emptiness created an entirely unique language of their own—claustrophobic, paranoid, hypnotic, and strangely beautiful at the same time. This was music that didn't attack head-on. It didn't overwhelm with speed or technicality. Instead, it slowly tightened the noose around the listener's neck.

On their fourth full-length album, black metal, death metal, industrial, ambient, and post-rock merged into a single organic entity. Every sound seemed to exist solely to deepen the feeling of unease. The warm, low-end bass tone, the occasionally tribal drumming, the detached, dreamlike vocals, and guitars that built atmosphere rather than relying on riffs created an experience resembling a hallucination, a fever dream, a waking nightmare, or a slow descent into darkness.

It was one of those rare albums that reveals new layers with every listen. More than a decade later, "Nothing But The Whole" still sounds fresh and utterly unique.

Unfortunately, the subsequent chapters of the band's story never quite matched that achievement. Both "Vide" and 2017's "Not For Music", released through Season of Mist, contained interesting ideas but often felt more like experiments than fully realized works. "Vide" in particular proved difficult for many longtime fans to embrace. Its radical departure from the weight, grime, and suffocating intensity of "Nothing But The Whole" alienated some listeners and simply put others to sleep. It was undoubtedly a bold album, but for many it lacked that elusive magic that made the 2014 release so special.

That is why I have been following the announcements surrounding the Belgians' seventh album, "Nowhere Speaks", with great interest over the past few weeks. Scheduled for release in July through Season of Mist, it is the first time in years that I've heard elements of the band that once made Emptiness so distinctive. The two tracks released so far, "The Clash Of Forces" and "The Threat," once again carry a sense of weight, tension, and that characteristic ability to build atmosphere somewhere between aggression and hypnotic trance-like immersion—qualities that were largely absent from the band's previous two releases.

Will "Nowhere Speaks" prove to be an album worthy of comparison to "Nothing But The Whole"? That remains to be seen.

What I do know is that, for the first time in many years, I am genuinely excited about a new Emptiness album and have the feeling that something truly special might be about to happen.

Norbert