Just earlier today, I thought I was already spoiled rotten by the collaboration between Dødsferd and Sarvok in the most recent creation from the former, “Asphyxiating Late Night Sessions”, being a crossover the both styles from each musician’s realm of expertise. A darkly ethereal creation that held nothing back when it came to getting right underneath the listener’s skin and never once failing to deliver on any promise that was thrown down at the onset, I was content with that being the most of such a collaboration between the two musicians for the time being. But the night, as it turns out, was more than bountiful regarding these two. If “Asphyxiating Late Night Sessions” is the more sublime and pulled back side of their sound, “Conspiracy of Thoughts” is when they fall wholeheartedly into the most horrific reaches of black metal.
Debuts are always fascinating to me given how there are no expectations in sight with anything being possible even considering the sonic territory where everyone involved here has come from originally. Having made an establishment in the final hours of 2019, the long nights and disdain of the world and its constant contamination of the human race has made for an embodiment of hate and suffering the likes of which should be all too familiar for those who have heard so much as a single minute of Dødsferd’s work, but it’s under the fresh moniker of Geometric Nictation of Lament’s Space, G.N.L.S. for brevity’s sake, that we’re given a new visage that is just as captivating as the duo’s other recent creation. A massively evocative effort right from the beginning, “Conspiracy of Thoughts” makes itself more than known right out of the gate with its cavernous suffering a constant theme throughout the six tracks that spread across over 37 minutes between its poignant topics that cut to the very heart of the suffering mankind has put upon the world with harrowing black metal to back it all up in terrific fashion. It channels many of the same energies that Dødsferd brings to the table, making it incredibly tempting for me to constantly make comparisons between the two, but to do so would be a disservice to what G.N.L.S. has conjured for its debut. This is not simply a creation that is destined to sit in the shadow of its predecessor.
Rather, “Conspiracy of Thoughts” makes it painfully clear that this is a new avenue for everyone involved that maintains its artistic integrity through immense talent, raw fury, and a more than well-established knack for the translations of suffering into the form of scathing black metal that manages to do far more than be a hollow shell with not much more to offer. Both Wrath and m.Sarvok didn’t need to do anything else to show us what such a pairing is capable of, but it is every ounce of G.N.L.S. that we see the potential for such taken to deeper depths that are the true definition of harrowing.
LISTEN to “Conspiracy of Thoughts” on Bandcamp here.
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