Deadspace - Libido Dominandi

Fresh off the release of what, I think, was their unprecedented masterpiece at the very beginning of the year, the Australian quintet, Deadspace, just couldn’t stay quiet while in such great form and dropped this four-track EP at the beginning of April to get the most out of their exceptional creative vibrance at the moment. With the more viscerally menacing vocal delivery from Dirge earlier this year being brought forth onto these songs in tandem with some of the band’s more blackgaze tendencies, Libido Dominandi is a fine offering of tracks that do quite well on their own and fit better outside the context of Dirge.
The ripping speed of the opening title track combines the bleakest elements of the band’s sound (including some anguished mourning wails) with some brief glimmers of some of their more ambient style.
The second of the four tracks, “52”, returns a bit more fully to the band’s older, depressive black metal ambience, incorporating piano into the slow, hopeless dirge and sorrowful atmosphere that the echoed guitar progressions create.
The EP’s shining moment, the song “Days of Colour”, is a phenomenal vocal showcase featuring not only the most monstrous, gurgling death growls I’ve heard on a Deadspace song yet alongside some of the most tortured, raspy singing the band have worked in as well, but also the excellent, subtle support of choir vocals behind them near the grand march of doom of the song’s closing moments. It’s undoubtedly one of the band’s finest moments as well.
The fourth and final track, “Skin”, fantastically mixes the sardonic side of the band’s more recent sound and the dark cerebral ambiance of albums like Reaching for Silence and The Liquid Sky into a momentous closing statement of musical power that affirms that Dirge was no fluke and that the band are indeed proficient in the depressive blackgaze they started with and the fearsome, crushing side of depressive black metal they’ve expanded into.
I have been continually impressed with and grateful for Deadspace’s tenacious work ethic and seemingly ceaseless output, and I’m glad that the product of their constant goming of their craft has been such significant improvement. I’m glad these songs, probably cut frommthe same cloth as Dirge, are on their own, though I think “Days of Colour” could have certainly held up somewhere on the track listing of Dirge, but that’s neither her nor there really. At the end of the day, it’s four solid tracks from a band in great form, confident in their recent, demonically explosive stylistic expansions and their ties back to their more introspective roots. What’s to complain about? Once again, well done Deadspace.
A well-deserved encore/10

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