ninehertz

Forming the Void have grown some. It took me a few listens, but when this clicked I found a band prodigiously more emboldened than when I last crossed their path, on their last album Relic.

They don’t whisk you away immediately, Extinction Event short of requisite hooks to grab and make you believe, but with its simple and heavy riff key it introduces a stoner rock Conan style from the start. Thereafter there’s heavy metal largesse, and nods to Mastodon (with its proggish metal) and Pallbearer (with its proggish doom).

It is on second track On We Sail that it delivers. Again Conan, in a triumvirate tryst with The Sword and Black Pyramid, it is familiar but the riff rolls forth with a mind of astral war; pomp and psych and destruction together as a call to arms. Now you’re happy to enlist to Forming the Void’s cause. It is formidable and fantastic. Arcane Mystic backs it up, Slomatics in here as well (probably goes hand in hand with the Conan reminders). The repeating chief riff batters out a clearing, allowing room for more expansive guitar work to wander, creating swirls of space rock in the long grasses.

By middle track Transient it has truly warmed up. This is glorious in its grandeur, the band a glowing beacon of growing confidence, it only dampened by a reluctance to rise up towards this plane song-long. There are fewer highlights from then on, and the ten minute closer overreaches, but it is never dull.

The shackles of doubt bound by obvious reminders of their peers have begun to be cast aside - a band striding forward, masters of their own destiny. Forming the Void have grown in doom stature, and Rift is an excellent record.