Country of origin:Canada

Location:Toronto/Stratford, Ontario

Status:Unknown

Formed in:2010

Genre:Ambient Black Metal

Lyrical themes:

Abstract Concepts, Dreams, Romance, Ghosts

Last label:Starlight Temple Society

Years active:

2010-?

NausikaDalazBlindaz, January 18th, 2011

This Canadian BM act's style combines a very fast buzzing style of black metal with a deep cold ambient slant which could almost be a send-up of much New Age music. On "Silenti etc es tantum Quietus", the music is repetitive with some melody and occasional lyrics sung in a ghostly rasp brimming with anger and ferocity located deep within the buzz. The sound includes a raw, almost burning buzz noise as if there's an intense, hot electric static in the mix somewhere. Though the music is constant with hardly any pause, in the ambient pieces and between tracks, you can sense a deep empty space extending indefinitely beyond the music; there is no strong sense of malevolent evil lurking there but an indifferent void which may be the more worrying of the two.

A strong feeling of melancholy, even resignation, is present here even though the pace ranges from medium-slow to fast, often within the same song, and the vocals are clearly hostile and aggressive. The one all-ambient instrumental piece "The Deadly Opiate", has a deeply introverted mood as well though the tones in themselves are actually quite pleasant, smooth and soothing. It's occurred to me with this piece that its context is everything: if you isolated the piece from the rest of the album, gave it a different, more neutral and generic name (like "Forest Quiet" or something equally harmless and bland) and packaged the music in bright colours, it could easily pass as yet more New Age mood-muzak and send you into deep sleep, undisturbed by dark dreams. Well, since deadly opiates can have the same effect, perhaps we'll leave the title as is. The better tracks on the album are the ones that combine the speeding BM buzz with slower, sometimes glittering guitar riffing passages and maybe some moments of blues-tinged rock reflection: these tracks are "Poisonous Thoughts Conjured", "Seventh Dream of Fading Away" and "The Ghost that Sleeps within Me".

Not a bad recording overall but not one that rises far above the general sea of BM releases: the ambient music passages loop over and over with a limited range of bland tones which, if they induce a trance-like state, would be due more to the listener's boredom than their mind going into a heightened state of consciousness and quiet meditation; and that strong buzz, simmering throughout the album, needs to do something more constructive than steadily droning all the way through. The drumming can be very thin which on this album is not much of a problem now but will be a drawback on later recordings if Void of Reveries want to be more creative and include other styles of music in their repertoire. I can detect some melodic post-rock tendencies on "Seventh Dream ..." and "The Ghost that Sleeps ..." and if VoR main-man Inoxia decided to pursue a more post-rock or prog-rock direction, he'll need to seriously bulk up and strength-train the percussion and give some thought also to creating and playing varied rhythms.

My impression is that VoR is a very new act and "Silenti etc es ..." is the first proper recording. There's plenty of work ahead for VoR to refine their style and bring out that slow-burning buzz into a mighty noise beast.