ALBUM REVIEW: Reverie – Forming The Void

With the release of their ambitiously-titled fourth album, Reverie, Lafayette, Louisiana-based sludge/prog rockers FORMING THE VOID provide the keystone of a reawakening. Their last outing was 2018’s Rift, and it was the most vivid realisation to-date of their blend of sludge metal and psychedelic prog jamming, while continuing the momentum they’d built throughout their prior outings, 2015’s Skyward and 2017’s Relic.

Even before one digs into the seven-track, 37-minute trip overflowing with twisting instrumental explorations, occasional Eastern-induced forms of matters and adaptation, and a comprehensive feeling of revelry resonant from the propelling album opener Sage through the quivering, protruding coda of The Ending Cometh, it’s extremely good to have FORMING THE VOID putting out this release. That’s about the least neutral assertion one could make about the album beyond “no kidding, Sherlock, I dig it,” but the truth is that from their inception FORMING THE VOID – singer/guitarist James Marshall, guitarist Shadi Omar Al-Khansa, bassist Luke Baker, and drummer Thomas Colley – have become one of the prime underground groups coming from over the pond in terms of the originality they bring to their modus operandi.

With a recording/producing job by James Whitten at HighTower Recording and a far-ranging mix that makes way for variations in sound in Sage as much as for a sax swing on Manifest and the bouncing guitar work on Electric Hive, FORMING THE VOID are on the loose to survey these latitudes and well beyond, setting a mesmeric vibe that is more synergistic than it is spellbinding. Reverie is less about attempting to pull the audience into an insensible mood than persuading them to involve with what they’re perceiving. To put it mildly, FORMING THE VOID are imploring those listening to these songs to stay close, whether that’s conveyed through the drive of Electric Hive, the shift into a spiral of Trace the Omen or the gambit from poise to poise in The Ending Cometh.

Surely, one can still be led astray in Reverie if that is what’s expected, and this is particularly true of Trace the Omen. Starting out with a somewhat auguring layers of interaction between Marshall and Al-Khansa, the track comes across as immediate in prompting its own tenacity and fine-tuning the suspense of the listener accordingly. Thus far, FORMING THE VOID have been quite dynamic in their delivery and they will be again as they shift through and Electric Hive around the corner, but the preluding moments of The Ending Cometh itself are given over to an unhurried unravelling that’s easing.

If one looks at the extent of what FORMING THE VOID have been able to achieve over time, the circumstances in which this new selection of songs comes to light are even more wide-ranging and all the more deserving of admiration. It’s been a remarkable innovative voyage up to this point, and whatever the future might have lined-up for FORMING THE VOID, Reverie proves that no matter what creative spaces they dwell, their dedication to progress is steady and a pivotal detail of who they are. Now, when is that ending cometh?

Rating: 9/10

Reverie is out on May 8th via Ripple Music.

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