Empty “The Last Breath of My Mortal Despair” CD

I personally don't hear too much black metal from Spain, but when this re-release of "The Last Breath of My Mortal Despair", the most recent full-length from Empty, showed up in the mail from De Tenebrarum Principio I was immediately impressed. The first few minutes of the opening track alone shift from precisely the types of cold, dissonant, atmospheric riffs that I long for from the genre to plenty of warped tremolo picking and droning leads, spacious clean passages and ambient textures, powerful midpaced surges, and then some. Even when they break into an instance of the ferociously blasting speeds so typical of this style, they certainly don't remain there for very long. It's really interesting, because in many ways the general feeling of the album is what I tend to think of as "classic" black metal, but their approach really isn't very straightforward. It's neither overtly technical nor blatantly avant-garde, but they're definitely touching on those types of influences in a manner that's occasionally frenzied or dramatic, but without being particularly chaotic or over the top. Hell, you can actually hear the basslines and everything!

The band formed in 1995 and took four years to release their first demo, then another three for their debut full-length, so... with "The Last Breath of My Mortal Despair" having originally been released in 2005 by Blackened Moon Productions, it's obvious that—unlike many black metal bands—these guys are in no hurry to rush material out there. And that emphasis on quality over quantity damn sure pays off, because this is a cool record. Having never heard any of the band's prior work I can't speak to whether or not this album marked a significant shift in quality, but based on the strengths of this material I'm fairly surprised that I had never heard of Empty before.

Empty "The Horrible Drawing Back of the Veil"

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ATMF
Moribund Records
Paragon Records