Something I've found really fascinating in the past few years in hardcore and crust punk is the way that black metal has started to really exert an influence. In many ways it's a match made in heaven, it fuses the similar ideas that defines these genres of music but also hints at far darker soundscapes. It allows for the music to become far harsher than ever before but also brings in a variety of elements such that more transcendent sides of the music can really be properly unlocked, in some cases for the first time ever. Black metal has become sort of a backbone for a lot of underground music, and this is extremely clear in the latest offering from Chicago's Moral Void, Deprive. A hardcore record that shows time and time again that the songwriters were obsessed with songs like "Chainsaw Gutfuck" and "Kathaarian Life Code" Deprive breaks open the genre with bursts of raw energy, but is not afraid to step back and get a little bit introspective too.
Coming out fists swinging with the minute and a half long banger "Harvest" is an exciting choice, and the followup track "Callous" maintains that vicious intensity. The sheer chaos embodied in the music is just as reminsicent of Full Of Hell as it is of old school black metal. As I said in the intro to this piece though a large part of the appeal of Deprive to me is the way that the bands black metal influences open up new sides to the music. One only need to listen to the nearly eight minute long masterpiece "Shadow" to hear a variety of black metal ideas brought into the hardcore context. Within all of this though the band maintains a consistent guitar tone and timbre, even the slowest moments on this record hint at the selfsame intensity that makes the sorter tracks so goddamn terrifying and I can't help but to love that. The sludgy assault that Moral Void so easily slip back into reminds us that they have more than just a few Mayhem records back at home, they have plumbed the depths of the genre and figured out some of the most demented and intriguing ways to bring together their vast swathe of influences.
It's mesmerizing to get lost in the twisted assault of Deprive. This is a band who constantly push boundaries and whose songwriting is simply top notch. While they certainly do fall into a lot of genre tropes they usually play off of them fairly well. One also gets the sense that this is the band first full length and that they haven't quite adapted to the longer format. While there are no filler tracks per say there certainly are bits that could be trimmed down and a broader approach to the album structure would probably help. As is though, one certainly gets the sense that Moral Void is trying to take you on a journey and that the end result of this adventure will be transcendent.
Score: 8/10
