Void - The Hollow Man (2021)

The Hollow Man, the third album by London’s most ambitious avant garde extreme metallers VOID, packs a lot into its 40-minute odyssey. The Hollow Man draws its primary conceptual inspiration, mercifully not from the rather blood-less Marillion track of the same name, but from T.S. Eliot’s classic of Modernist poetry, ‘The Hollow Men’ – in addition to Coppola’s related psychedelic Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now, the religious epiphany/madness of Philip K. Dick, the weirdness of Willy Wonka, the culture of ancient Babylon, apocalypses in their various shades, and no doubt a host of other batshittery that I’ve missed. This heady mix is gloriously strung together into a deeply impressive and coherent concept album of the very best kind, told in VOID’s signature language of brutal and unpredictable riffs. Here, that style is expanded by their most eclectic range of genres to date, the fullest, richest production of their oeuvre, and all wrapped up in the enigmatic and eye-catching artwork of Metastazis. Pulling off their grandiose ambition with panache, this is VOID’s best work yet, and one that demands obsessive replaying.