Ancst - Ghosts of the Timeless Void

One of my more recent Bandcamp finds, I stumbled across Ancst’s 2016 album, Moloch, and found a lot of solid, ethereally harmonized death metal groove. It was sure as hell not pushing any boundaries but the subtle hardcore ethos of the vocals and the stickiness of a lot of the riffs had me pretty modestly impressed.
Ghosts of the Timeless Void finds Ancst venturing through pretty similar territory, though I found myself a bit disappointed to not find quite as many thrilling riffs or dynamics on this album. I think a bolder production would have been a great benefit to this album, as well as a bit more variation in death metal vocal technique.
That doesn’t mean the album isn’t without its highlights. “Concrete Veins” gives a kind of blackened approach to a more overtly hardcore sound, and “Shackles of Decency” before it is a pretty formidable take on the melodic majesty of Swedish death metal. “Sanctity” on the other hand, pairs the Swedish death metal sound with a more metalcore sound and even blackgaze at the beginning. The groovy guitar riff in “Unmasking the Imposters” is fucking face-smashing and I wish there were more moments like it on the rest of the album. A lot of songs like “Of Gallows and Pyres”, “Dying Embers”, and “Quicksand” bank heavily on fast black metal riffing in a more incitingly harmonized than malevolently brooding manner. It becomes kind of the backbone of the album. but it also becomes the murkiness that gives the album a bit too much homogeneity.
Full of shouted vocals, blast beats, speed-picked riffs slightly anthemic in quality, and melodic guitar attack, Ghosts of the Timeless Void certainly satiates a few types of appetites at once for a bit, but not enough to feel like a complete experience. Still, I don’t want that to come off as a deterrent from checking them out, because they are indeed worth it.

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