Deadspace - Mouth of Scorpions

The tenacious Australian DSBM/blackgaze crew are fresh off two releases from 2017 (the Reaching for Silence split, and the LP The Liquid Sky) with a quick 3-piece EP to ensure they leave some kind of mark on 2018. 
The five tracks Deadspace contributed to Reaching for Silence had me hooked with the unconventional diversity of clean and unclean anguished vocal deliveries across the album over similarly heartstring-pulling guitar leads of both the clean and distorted type. The only thing that left me wanting more on those songs was perhaps some slightly more vibrant drumming, but minor pickiness aside, it was a set of songs that really impressed me.
Their subsequent full-length, The Liquid Sky, felt less potent, however; a little more in-line with most of the blackgaze out there and less unique of an experience than what I would have liked from a long-play Deadspace album.
The difference between LP Deadspace and EP Deadspace seems to be further compounded here on Mouth of Scorpions, and by that I mean that Deadspace has once again poured a tremendous amount of thought and energy into these three songs.
“Heart of Stone” kicks the EP off with the most fury I’ve heard from the band before with an absolutely menacing palm-muted groove and some much more exciting drumming after the building introduction. The mix of clean vocals (which remind me of Tommy Giles Rogers from Between the Buried and Me) and visceral black metal shouts over the dark, crushing instrumentation is a juxtaposition I love hearing from Deadspace.
The subsequent title track moves through a few more dynamic sections with a variety of moods; the vocal performance here is excellent and the song’s overall more shoegaze-y feel lends a fitting backdrop for the variety of cleans and tormented cries that span the whole track.
The final song, “World of Pain”, sounds like the opening of a damaged soul at the end of all hope, and finishes the EP in a magnificently cathartic fashion, and it’s possibly my favorite song from the band. Sort of similar to Ghost Bath’s outstanding hit, “Golden Number”, the track immediately captures a sense of honest self-reflection, only not eventually turned quite so overtly optimistically like Ghost Bath’s song. My only wish is that it had a more fleshed out exit section and not just a fade-out; it’s a grand song and I feel like it deserves a more conclusive ending. Again, just minor qualms, it’s still a great song and still a solid EP.
Perhaps it’s the volume and frequency of their output, but I would love to hear Deadspace conjure the kind of consistently captivating atmosphere they have on this album and Reaching for Silence on another full-length project.
Nevertheless Deadspace are a vibrant, hard-working band that definitely deserve some attention; below is the link to this album on their Bandcamp page. I smashed that buy button like a minute and a half into “Heart of Stone”.

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