Killer new double-disc album of terminally grim n' blackened free-jazz deathdrift from this Spanish duo, who for this live performance expanded their lineup to an eight piece. Recorded in September 2014 at experimental art festival Incubate, held in Tilburg, Netherlands, this album stretches out for more than eighty minutes, and boasts a massive sonic presence, thanks to their swollen ranks. And it's some lineup: the core duo of saxophonist Otto Kokke and drummer Rene Aquarius is joined by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek, Shivers) on electronics, guitarists Dirk Serries ( Fear Falls Burning, Vidna Obmana) and Steven Vinkenoog, Colin Webster on sax and clarinet, Peter Johan Nijland (Distel, Hadewych) on strings, and Thomas Ekelund (Trepaneringsritualen) on vocals. The resulting performance is a pungent, earth-rattling ritual that seems to seep from the surface of the room in a miasma of sulfuric murk. It stands out amid the rest of the Neanderthals' catalog, and is probably the heaviest, darkest recording they've brought us so far.

Opening with primitive, crustacean scrapings and muted pulses of black drone that slowly spread across the beginning of the album, the group begins to chart a lightless expanse of hushed electro-acoustic spasms and creeping malevolence. Slowly rolling out each musician, they patiently come together in an atmospheric wash of improvised sound, blending surges of doleful, reverb-drenched electric guitar with a distant low-frequency rumble. That rumble becomes almost omnipresent throughout the entire set; drums are not so much played as they are allowed to simply rattle and reverberate within the soundwaves generated by the amplified instruments. Fragments of beautiful shadowy melody drift languidly through the darkness, and early on this shares a similar vibe as some of Earth's more recent output, unfurling nocturnal, drawn-out twang and shadings of rural desolation. Webster's clarinet at times even resembles a ghostly harmonica floating in the distance. But they begin to dip into more threatening, cacophonous territory later on, that brooding freeform drift growing blacker and heavier as the reeds are tortured in the throes of violent breath, droning feedback swelling into ominous thunderheads, their dissonant chords twisted into monstrous roars rising out of the deep, and distorted electronics rise and fall like the horrified peal of a malfunctioning air raid signal.

But the group uses restraint, even in the more harrowing passages. As the second half of Voids picks up, the band pushes against the seams of this roiling, pitch-black soundmass, those feedbacking guitars rolling like whalesong in the depths, the pained rat-squeal of the saxophone straining against that surging blackness. It never fully tips over into violence, but the threat constantly lingers in the room. The whole last half is like hearing the rumble of some infernal orchestra slowly tuning up, stretched into immense, ominous drones and waves of seething sax-lashed drift. Once the drums finally come in with a simple, rolling pulse, it even starts to achieve a vague sort of momentum, shifting into a quasi-motorik throb as distant metal crashes to earth and guitars shape themselves into an eerie two-note melody. Panicked, asthmatic reeds and sharp-edged electronics streak overhead like black comets flaming out, and in the final moments, the performance takes on an almost warlike, cataclysmic atmosphere, ending with vast blasts of percussive power reverberating across the cracked and blackened earth left by the group's scorching progress, taking on a vaguely ritualistic feel as it ultimately returns to the still, electrified blackness from which everything began.

An immense, awe-inspiring performance from the group that has quickly become one of my favorite avant-jazz albums that's appeared in the past year; obviously, this one is highly recommended if you're already a fan of Dead Neanderthals' other work, but this is also well worth picking up if you're obsessed with heavy, doom-laden dronescapes tinged with traces of dark jazz, or monstrous slabs of stygian ambience punctured by blasts of terrifying dissonance.