If the thought of progressive metal is enough to shrivel your proverbials, look away now. Still here? Well, if you haven’t heard of DVNE (and even if you have), you’re in for a monstrous treat.
Originally formed in Edinburgh over a decade ago, DVNE’s name is a direct reference to Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novels, and their music is similarly grand in scope: meticulously crafted songs that surge and boil with crushing heaviness (with some of the best screaming of the genre), punctuated by rippling passages of devastating beauty. 2021’s Etemen Ænka (the band’s second album, and their first for the legendary Metal Blade Records) was proof of just how brilliant modern metal can be, and, Cycles of Asphodel – a live re-imagining of four of those songs, performed at The Biscuit Factory in 2022 (feat. local musician Lissa Robertson’s operatic vocals and violin) – was earth-shattering.
Two years later, we finally have Voidkind, and DVNE’s third LP feels like a triple-filtered distillation of Etemen Ænka. Songs like ‘Summa Blasphemia’, ‘Reaching for Telos’, ‘Sarmatæ’ and ‘Cobalt Sun Necropolis’, tighten the grooving, writhing immediacy of the riffs and solos (think Sylosis, or Between The Buried And Me – without the jazz), and broaden the thundering complexity of the (Gojira-esque) percussion. The horrible guttural screams (see Conjurer) are just as murderous as ever, and the increasingly abundant clean clean singing provides a welcome touch of Baroness.
If that’s not reason enough to cancel your plans for the next hour: the album’s second single, ‘Abode of the Perfect Soul’, features one of the best whiteknuckle metal riffs you’ll hear this year. Get it on the stereo.
Voidkind is out now on Metal Blade Records
