Vacuous - Dreams of Dysphoria LP

After grappling with it for a week, I am pretty blown away by 'Dreams of Dysphoria', the debut album from UK Death Metal group Vacuous. It has been my turbo fuel, aiding me to overcome states of deliriousness to execute the noble tasks of (more) stock management and data entry.

Mulling over Vacuous I'm reminded of a specifically British DM context that was made (semi) clear to me by the book 'Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore'. The takeaway being that Killing Joke and Bolt Thrower weren't that (sub)culturally far apart.

While they're lumped with the 'atmospheric' subsect of Death Metal, the atmosphere Vacuous conjure contains a crude human anguish (like Killing Joke, Amebix, Rudimentary Peni) that's far from from the sophisticated guitar shop goatee-haver connotations the prefix might contain. The creeping atmosphere is well balanced by a precise and very pummelling heaviness. Mad stuff! - Nic