EP REVIEW: Telluric Dismemberment – Void Rot

VOID ROT follow up their debut album from 2020 Descending Pillars with a new EP entitled Telluric Dismemberment. Containing one new track, a specially selected cover song and three live tracks, Telluric Dismemberment is the perfect fix for those desperate for more from VOID ROT.

Telluric Dismemberment is centred around the title track and it wastes no time in delivering the deathly doom goods that VOID ROT have busily cultivated since their debut EP Consumed By Oblivion. With a pummelling rhythm at its core, Telluric Dismemberment certainly delivers on all fronts with caustic doom colliding with some suitably menacing death metal to create a suffocating wall of hypnotic intensity, complete with some killer riffs throughout. If this track is any indication of the next VOID ROT album, then you can consider it filed under highly anticipated.

Next up is the cover song and it’s VOID ROT‘s version of Black Embrace by AMORPHIS, a track from the Finnish band’s debut album The Karelian Isthmus. While it stays faithful to the original version, it does have the VOID ROT sound and vibe coursing through it. It also makes perfect sense for the band to cover a song from AMORPHIS and from that album in particular because the band’s early material is such a big influence on the whole death-doom sound that VOID ROT specialise in nowadays.

The EP is rounded off with three live tracks from a CVLT Nation live session and it shows off the power of VOID ROT in a live environment. Consisting of material from Descending Pillars with the album’s title track, Liminal Forms and Inversion, these versions see the trio of songs played with a crushing vibrancy and the power is evident even when played at home. It conjures up feelings of awe when thinking about how they went over in the actual live settings. There is a rawness to these recordings but it is coupled with a tight delivery and the results are never anything less than excitedly fervent.

Ahead of their first ever European tour that will see the Minneapolis band join forces with record label mates and kindred spirits in Italian death metallers BURIAL, this EP acts as less of a stopgap release before they deliver their second album and more as a vision of where VOID ROT have been and also where they are heading to in the future, as well as paying tribute to one of their influences too. When all is said and done Telluric Dismemberment is essential listening for anyone into the whole death-doom world as VOID ROT deliver their music with passion, focus and a macabre finesse throughout this release and show they can undeniably cut it in the live arena too.

Rating: 8/10

Telluric Dismemberment is set for release on July 22nd via Everlasting Spew Records.

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