Abstract Void – Back To Reality
3 min read
Band: Abstract Void
Title: Back To Reality
Label: Flowing Downward
Release Date: 29 October 2018
Country: planet Earth
Format reviewed: FLAC
What is the crossing point between 80s synth, black gaze, dream dance and black metal? Somebody will say that I’m crazy and will punch me in the face for daring to suggests such impossible mix. Or mish-mash.
In reality it does exist. Same way as light and darkness, day and night, good and bad. The opposites attract and the extremes collide. Abstract Void delivers us one of the most interesting collaborations of styles I’ve heard most recently. A brief reminder and turning the page back: in the end of 90s many metal and rap or electronic bands collaborated between to create variety of mixtures, and some of them were pretty successful. From other hand, some flows in the industrial metal ave already given us great tunes and combinations of sounds, samples and dance elements.
However now Abstract Void challenge us to go a decade further back than the 90, using synth pop elements from the 80s as well. Many of us metalheads who grew in the 80s with that kind of tunes around will immediately feel comfortable with the music, simply because it triggers a nostalgic taste and dreaming/illusional delusions.. On top, there are clear dream dance/trance motifs from the end of 90s, when the Euro disco transformed into so many “electronic and techno” sub-genres with DJs playing, similar to the metal music having so great variety. Now add dominant keys’ ambient atmosphere, absolutely great black metal vocals and (post-) black metal guitar patterns, blast beats + great dose of black gaze and hidden sorrow. There you have it – Abstract Void delivers one of the finest and most surprising albums of 2018! Trust me on this!
If you are still reading this, and I caught your attention with the straight to the point picture, let’s add some more facts. It is the second record of Abstract Void – a one-man band from the planet Earth. The surrounding unknown makes the project even more interesting and I’m really digging to find further information about it. “Back to Reality” is the second album of the “band” after the release of 2017 “Into the Blue”. Containing seven songs, “Back to Reality” is like a travel through cosmic fields and time in a enormous gracious space ship. Nightsky and stars surrounding in this space journey. And you feel how small is one man here on the Earth, how transient is life, and we are really a “dust in the wind” and in time. The music just brings VAST space you can feel around. You just travel in time, moving in a dream, feeling the sweet pain, the melancholy. (Another scenery – sunset at the seaside, gazing into the horizon, remembering your youth and all the past…) The album is a A Wind of Reminiscence, A Reflection of a Dying Past. You just…Watch the sunset fade, Disconnect and Sigh.
I met similar approach this year in Unreqvited, Mesarthim and Lumnos albums for example, however here the synthwave/dream dance motifs are bit more emphasized in all parts of the songs. The overall feeling is similar though.
So if you like what I tried pathetically to describe above, without dissecting the tracks, you are a nostalgic grown in 80s and 90s, and you have an open mind for the music, just go and try “Back to Reality”. Definitely the album will be your great escape of the unbearable reality! 9/10 Count Vlad
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9/10 Epic Storm
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