by Daniel B, May '08

The name is, I assume, drawn from the song by cult black metal ritualists VON. A good starting point. The same menace flows from the work of both bands, a minimalism and rawness. The same ritualistic feeling. The same hateful spirit. Though taken in another direction entirely by Vennt.

Noise electronics: squeals, dissonant howls.

Bass riffs: crushing, repetitive, glacial.

Drums: pounded within mere inches of their lives.

Vocals: reverb/delay-drenched; screaming, roaring.

Atmosphere: palpable menace, palpable loathing. Terror.

Vennt.

The electronic squeals squalls howls float above under through everything. Weave through the structure. Insinuate themselves into the fabric of the music. Seep into the depths and pull themselves from the abyss to shiver into the upper reaches. A frame for the structure.

The bass churns plods: riff and riff and riff. There are surprising subtleties which lie hidden within the general cacophony, belied by the expected simplicity of the riffs. Riffs which pummel with their constancy unswerving inevitability. Almost monotonal in their repetition. Until drawn forward by the surrounding elements; brought forward seething frothing heaving.

The drums are beaten hammered destroyed. I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Vennt perform at the first Obey Convention. And I watched---almost exclusively---the drummer. He assaults the kit with a fury I'd not seen before and I've not seen since. A fury which is the perfect complement to the rest of the sound swirling around them.

Drums and bass maintain an almost impossible unity throughout the disc. A unity which provides a foundation of absolute heaviness. So heavy that the work involved in dragging the music forward is slowed to a feverish crawl. A feverish incessant juggernaut of a crawl.

Remember Abruptum? How the vocals sounded like someone reacting to knife-wounds and salt? (For good reason, apparently. But that's a story for another day.) Anguish pain horror. Right? The end result of Vennt's vocals is comparable. Reflecting hateful energy, too, of course. The reverb and delay only serve to increase the effect of the vocals. Drawn from some subterranean space, pulled up livid raw bloody.

The atmosphere: shiver-inducing in its calculated surging relentless assault. Everything---every instrument, every sound---woven into a shroud: everpresent suffocating.

Vennt achieves, with this disc, a sort of apotheosis of this distinct melding of underground music genres; they have filtered the genres for the best parts---the most expressive, the strongest, the most intense, the most harrowing---and homogenised them into a clear direct statement.

Vennt captures the spirit of doom despair anguish fear. Captures it cages it throws the listener into the cage with it into that darkest of prisons and locks the door.

Favourite song: “Visions of Smoke”

Headphones Addendum (see note included in my review of Be Bad's Vision Correction):

A sense of foreboding looms; a thunderstorm swollen with terrifying intent. Howling electronics twist around the thunderous bass and drums. Vocals attempt the insuperable maelstrom, struggle against the structure: tearing rending shredding.

Incessantly pouring forth. Seething vitriolic surges. Roiling masses of sound. Heart-stopping menace. A torrent of filthy foul loathing.

Unholy. Vicious. Unslaked. Unsated. Hunting. Prowling.

Hungry.

Vennt is inundation.