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Album Reviews : Deadspace – The Liquid Sky

By on March 4, 2018

Deadspace is a metal band from Perth in Australia. Before listening to their new album, “The Liquid Sky”, I had read that they were black metal. Upon hearing their band name I immediately thought of the video game of the same name, and of the band Darkspace, who are also black metal. This led me to believe I was in for something pretty brutal, the soundtrack to being ripped apart by aliens. This couldn’t be further from what I experienced. Genre wars can get annoying at times, but I think they are important when trying to find new music. So for the sake of helping people discover this great band, I’m going to go ahead and say they are black metal with very strong post-rock and DSBM influences.

The Liquid Sky is one of those albums that people are either going to love or hate. Sounds like a cliché, but fans of this sort of music will probably know what I’m talking about. Bands like Ghost Bath, Deafheaven etc. receive a lot of negative internet comments from black metal purists. I believe Deadspace is the type of band that might receive the same criticism. Fortunate, y though, there are a lot of fans of this type of music that doesn’t care whether it is “true” black metal or not.

This album is very dynamic. The quieter parts are soft, beautiful and dreamlike. There are a lot of beautiful delayed and reverberated guitar sections. During these softer sections, and during some of the heavier sections, the vocalist uses a lot of clean singing. The style of clean singing used in these sections is not exactly what I like. The style was reminiscent of what I’ve heard from bands like Karnivool, personally, I am not a fan. Having said that, I do not think they are at all performed badly and I can see a lot of people enjoying them. The drums in these sections sound amazing. Excellent snare and kick that sound very natural, not at all overly produced. These quieter sections are interesting and flow with the music well, and can be a welcome change from the harsh levels this album can reach. Then in the track “Kidney Bleach” there are acoustic guitars and lots of different percussions. The clean singing in this track is very powerful, both the male and female vocals. This track is so strong, it’s an acoustic track but at times it feels as heavy and brutal as the rest of the album.

The heavy sections are very satisfying. The vocalist is not afraid of screaming his guts out or producing lower growls. I enjoyed the harsh vocal performance very much. The guitar sound is excellent. Not overly reverberated as with some DSBM influenced bands.

I think track three, ‘Below the Human Scumline’, will give the listener a good idea of what this album sounds like. It features their heavy, metal side and their more ambient side too. Overall every track is so dynamic that you get a bit of everything no matter what track you choose. ‘The Worms Must Feed’ is a very beautiful track too. It features one of the most “black metal” sections on the album, furious blast beats before moving into a beautiful, soaring section. I found myself returning to this track again and again.

I would recommend this album to anyone interested in bands like Ghost Bath, Deafheaven, Shining, Grey Waters, Germ, etc. This is an album that doesn’t care about sticking to one genre. An extremely strong output! I cannot wait to see these guys live and I predict we will be hearing a lot more about them as time goes on if the quality of this record is anything to go by!

Band: Deadspace
Album: The Liquid Sky
Year: 2017
Genre: Black Metal
Label: Talheim Records
Origin: Australia

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