We return once again to plunge our heads into the abysses unleashed by Avgrav. We already reviewed this dark entity’s 2024 demo ‘Exegesis’ a few months ago. For various reasons, this review is special to me: first, it was my first dissection of an Indonesian band for VM-Underground; second, I was eager to hear something new from this band.
The present demo, ‘Spiritual Nihilism Redemption’, was released on tape by Depressive Illusions Records, a label specialising in this type of gloomy, abyssal entity. It opens its dark embrace with the instrumental ‘Hymne Nihilistar I’ which, with its mysterious and reverberating atmosphere, draws us in while entangled with background noises. Distorted, lifeless notes emerge to mark the progression, and keyboard effects lend a nightmarish touch to the ether. These limbo-like atmospheres, or rather, tracts from Dante’s Inferno with twisted, dark nuances and a sense of pursuit in the shadows of some spiritual abyss, serve as a fitting prelude to ‘The Gates of Redemption’, which unleashes its intense and raw Black Metal.
The guitars are as sharp as daggers. The vocals, just like on the 2024 demo, are ‘spectral wails that sound distant in time and space’, and the drums hammer away nonstop. The intensity on this track is everything, as there is no rest or time to breathe in the almost 4 minutes of punishment. Once again, the jaws open with another instrumental called ‘Hymne Nihilistar II’ which, beyond sharing the same name as the first instrumental, is its continuation with the same previously torn elements, but emphasising the mysterious recesses where it leads us.
And of course, we already know that they are muddying the path for ‘The Execution of Redemption’ to attack. What seemed to me a good track to close with, since it had a few raw and suggestive guitar riffs that I assumed would indicate the entire chaotic rhythmic journey that was going to unfold with the same intensity as the track ‘The Gates of Redemption’, was suddenly castrated after being decapitated in the first minute by the appearance of the ambient soundscape with which they already slaughtered two instrumentals in the demo, but with some laments bleeding in the background. This track left a lot to be desired in my opinion, since the entire demo is about 13 and a half minutes long and approximately 8 minutes were spent on background music. Honestly, I expected more from the demo, but we’ll have to give them time to focus on producing more music and fewer intros and outros.
