Band – Deathvoid
Album – Live Tapestries
Country of Origin – Switzerland/Italy
Genre – Raw Black Metal
Release Date – April 12, 2025 (cassette on April 15, 2025)
Label – Realm and Ritual
Author – Hayduke X
Deathvoid is not for everyone. To be completely honest, Deathvoid is probably not for most people. Deathvoid, however, is for me. The band, which includes Stilgar (bass, vocals, noise, broken tapes, and formerly part owner of the sadly now defunct Xenoglossy Productions), makes the rawest of raw black metal. The band is thankfully also proof positive that you don’t need to be a right wing idiot to make the raw ‘trve kvlt’ sound. It was through discovering Xenoglossy (by way of Thecodontion) that I first stumbled on Deathvoid and the many other gems on the label, which specialized in exploring what many would find unlistenable. In my explorations, most of the work they released is very cathartic and enlightening through deep listens. And of those projects they released, Deathvoid is a band I noticed early, and which remains a favorite.
Deathvoid has developed a reasonably lengthy discography, with three full lengths and a variety of splits, demos, etc. Live Tapestries marks the first live release though. The five tracks were recovered from recordings made at two secret house shows somewhere in Italy on January 2nd and January 3rd, 2019 respectively. The already raw nature is intensified by the analog and lofi nature of a recording in that setting. For me, this makes each listen feel more organic, in addition to the meditative and otherworldly nature of the hidden riffs, crackles of noise, and other general interdimensional strangeness.
“Tapestrieer” is a previously unreleased track, the only one on the album, while the other four were all released in some form or other at various points in the band’s career. The first three were recorded on January 2nd, with tracks four and five being recorded the next day. Even “Outro” has added sparkle from the noises of the milling crowd caught in the gentle void. The band played these shows as a trio – two guitars and a bass – which means the drums come from a pre programmed drum track, which they played over.
Not only is this wild and strange music in it’s own right, it’s a piece of extreme metal history, captured in a DIY space on (to quote Stilgar, when I reached out to him about this release) “a cheap faulty tape recorder.” For the rare few who like to challenge themselves, I highly recommend this release.
Biography: Hayduke X has been writing for MoshPitNation since June of 2016. He is also a contributor to The Metal Wanderlust. Prior to joining the MoshPitNation team, Hayduke published reviews on his own blog Rage and Frustration. In addition, he has DJ’ed an online metal radio show of the same name as his blog, written for TOmetal.com, done interviews for Metal Rules, and collaborated with The Art of B Productions to create video interviews with a wide variety of bands.
