Some say you recognize a great album from its ability to transport you elsewhere to another place, either real or imaginary. In the case of Nowhere Speaks, the spectacular new album from Emptiness, that place is the eponymous Nowhere: a claustrophobic, morphing labyrinth without an exit, where light is devoured by the horizon and the experience of being trapped inside it becomes a dark delight you do not want to escape.

Both metaphorically and literally, Nowhere Speaks continues from the sudden, perplexing mid-riff ending of their 2014 breakthrough album Nothing But The Whole and concludes with its opening riff, forming a jagged and warped Möbius strip between the two albums. This haunting presence of the past and its co-existence with the present, together wriggling to become the future, imbues Nowhere Speaks and its avant-garde extreme metal with a peculiar sense of temporal and spatial dislocation that is at once bewildering, mesmerizing and beautiful, with textures and atmosphere that embody a strand of DNA absorbed from the adventurous richness of Not for Music (2017) and the suffocating isolation of Vide (2021). 

As always, Emptiness remains both illusive and elusive, with songs that defy expectation of conventional structure or pay-off. In many places, Nowhere Speaks feels like a living, moaning soundscape, a translucent liminal barrier barely containing the sinister horrors behind it, while offering a line of sight into the inky abyss on the other side (witness the mixture of wailing chants and synths in the background of “When the Whole Arrives” or “Next in Line” and its rasping and hissing whispers that transform into a deepening dreamstate with a sighing allure that ultimately leads to the musical equivalent of a decapitation). It takes the form of a writhing mass of ominous texture, akin to a mercurial mirage rippling in the dark corners of the listener’s peripheral vision, where the music lurches malevolently with guitars groaning, synths howling and Jérémie Bézier incanting through gritted teeth.

While Nowhere Speaks is constantly morphing, contracting and expanding, like dread and oblivion coalescing into a nightmare, it also knows when to pummel and devastate, exemplified by the menacing opening salvo of “The Threat” or the grinding rumble “The Clash of Forces” that is elevated into absolute excellence with a stunning catharsis delivered through a hair-raising tremolo-fueled interlude sizzling with tension and crackling electricity that is finally released by a brief, hair-raising guitar solo. Powerful dynamics and breathtaking transitions are found throughout the album, such as in the undulating and gradually intensifying swell of the main riff of “Nowhere Speak” or in the ever-escalating thrilling culmination of “All for Nothing.” Even the 90-second burst of “One Must See All” sows seeds that mature in the darkness and reappear on “All for Nothing” ablaze in full blossom, testament to the richness and interconnectivity of the album’s motifs and ideas. Ultimately, this is an album that must be experienced and ingested in its entirety, as a whole (no pun intended) rather than through its individual tracks. This includes guitarist Olivier J. Leda-Weiss’s cover art that evokes surrealist collage, Buñuel and Dali’s Un Chien Aldalou and Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante, with a heroic dose of Gigerian biomechanical night terrors, associations and references that resonate in the context of the album. All this is crowned by Jérémie Bézier’s exquisite production which guarantees weight and density for the permeating claustrophobia while simultaneously cutting through its intrinsic murk in a way that at once accentuates details and presents the music in a hypnotizing manner.

There simply are no other bands like Emptiness. With Nowhere Speaks they have yet again demonstrated their mastery of building tenebrous liminal spaces and nightmarescapes that are uniquely theirs, through and through. I am enamored by it, in awe of its surreal wonders, defiance of convention and labyrinthine, shapeshifting nature. For me, the sign of a truly great album is its ability to plant itself so deep into my mind that it starts playing in my mind when I wake up during the hour of the wolf, when darkness and unease reign supreme. Nowhere Speaks is the magisterial manifestation of that enigmatic state and configuration of time and space,

– Zyklonius

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Nowhere Speaks will be available July 17 on Season of Mist. For more information on Emptiness, visit their Facebook page.