VOIDWIND: Clad In Your Misery

Release year: 2023
Label: Misantropia Records

To tell you the truth, I’m not a huge fan of atmospheric black metal. I find that too often it loses itself in its meandering songs, emphasizing the atmosphere over things that are interesting to the listener. You know, things like melody or interesting structure. But still it doesn’t work as ambient background music, either.

As such, when I realized that Finnish Voidwind’s style is atmospheric, melancholic black metal – the name and logo had me assuming it’d be something quite different in style – I wasn’t too sure I’d like the album. Sheesh, I thought, three tracks all over 12 minutes in length and a five minute outro; this is going to be an ordeal.

But you know what? Rather surprisingly, Clad In Your Misery turns out to be an exception to the rule. Sure, it’s a bit meandering, and sometimes atmosphere does eclipse tangible elements such as melody or rhythm, but Voidwind keep their package together quite admirably.

Kicking off with a track called This Cold Void, the album enters with synthesized choirs and a slow piano playing a languid, melancholy and forlorn melody. Eventually, at around the 1:30 minute mark, electric guitars kick in, but things never get aggressive, raw or abrasive. The distorted guitars are largely a layer of ambience, a formless and distant buzzing which sounds like slowly falling rain and dense fog looks like in autumn. Over it, synths and undistorted guitars play slow, wistful and melancholy melodies. The vocals are a repressed, hoarse murmur more than proper black metal shrieks or snarls, sitting in well with the overall nature of the music.

Essentially, the palette and building blocks Voidwind use to construct their autumnal black metal aren’t that vast or numerous. All of the tracks are of the same atmospheric timbre, and utilize pretty much the same tricks of the trade outlines above. But it doesn’t matter, as all three proper tracks are imbued with the same haunted beauty, and despite certain similarities running through the entirety of the album, it doesn’t get boring or trite at any stage.

Comparisons, you say? Drop some names, you demand? Well, I’m sure people who can’t get enough of the likes of Drudkh will find this to their taste. On the other hands, fans of the noughties dark metal scene and acts such as Throes Of Dawn will undoubtedly hear welcome echoes from those old bands here. And, certainly, fans of the lighter and more atmospheric side of DSBM might find this to their tastes, though the melancholia and sadness of Voidwind doesn’t translate to depression or suicide at least in my mind.

Above all, Clad In Your Misery is a beautiful album. It’s one of those albums where you don’t look into the complexity of composition or arrangement, or the skillfulness of instrumentation, or any such essentially technical detail. It’s one of those albums you put on, lean back, and take in as much with your heart as with your ears.

It’s the perfect listening this time of the year, when autumn starts to turn into winter.

Voidwind has no official web presence; visit label Misantropia Records’ website instead