Another album that I only recently discovered after being out for awhile, Dimentianon's Collapse The Void was the most recent thing to come out from this Carl Sagan-quoting New York death metal outfit, here issued on limited-edition vinyl by Nuclear War Now. It's one of the more overlooked releases from the label, but I really dug this record when I finally heard it, as these guys inject a heavy dose of one of my favorite sounds (that being Teutonic electronics) into a an interesting and progressive black/death assault.

This co-release with Paragon Records is the third album (really more of a glorified EP, clocking in twenty five minutes) from Dimentianon, who include members of deathdoom extremists Rigor Sardonicous; the swirling star-burnt chaos of Collapse The Void definitely sticks out among all of the ultra-violent blackened death metal that Nuclear War Now is usually known for, though this stuff does share some proggy similarities with Australia's Stargazer, who have also previously appeared on the label. Not to say that Collapse isn't its own brand of viciousness, though; the five sprawling tracks featured here are rooted in a ferocious blackened death metal sound, but Dimentianon embellish it with kosmische keyboards and some ornate songwriting that harkens back to classic 70's era progressive rock. And they do it a manner that doesn't sound like another Enslaved clone or many of the other more recent black/death metal outfits that have gotten cozy with their inner King Crimson. Opener "Return..." gets into that mix of influences pretty quickly, the band veering out of some vicious blasting blackened death at top speed, into flourishes of Moog-festooned prog, brief passages of instrumental music that build upon the band's sinister star-gazing vibe, while unveiling an unearthly ambience over the blasting savagery. The rest of Collapse features lots of sprawling, soaring guitar shred and sweeping cosmic drama amid surges of complex thrash riffery and blastbeating drums, the keyboards figuring heavily into the mix without getting either too overbearing or two frilly. Where things get very prog is the mid-album track "Fragmented Nostalgia", a beautifully pensive piece of instrumental music arranged for female vocals, sweeping Klaus Schulze-esque synthesizers, burbling bass, and piano, a stunningly nostalgic bit of kosmische majesty that sounds like it was plucked right out of 1978, and it's a sound that the guys in Dimentianon pull off really well, somehow turning it into a perfect segueway into the crushing doom-laden evil of the following song "The Forgotten". Gotta say that this has turned into a new favorite prog-death album since stumbling on it; while not quite on the same level as recent offerings from Tribulation and Morbus Chron, fans of that mixture of black/death and old-school progressive rock should definitely give this one a spin. Limited to two hundred fifty copies.