“Lead us to where the owls cry in the night.”
Abigail Williams are a difficult band to quantify. Formerly, they were metalcore-tinged symphonic black metal, straight out of the school of Cradle of Filth. They later set out on the path of atmospheric black metal ever since their genre-defining magnum opus Walk Beyond the Dark some six years ago. Yet, on mastermind Ken Sorceron’s latest opus, A Void Within Existence, there are flickers of the ancients within the band’s second step beyond the dark.
A Void Within Existence lurches into life with “Life Disconnected” which toes the line somewhere between Emperor and At the Gates. The latter influence shows Sorceron’s lingering connection to the band’s earliest days, when they would boast they featured elements of the Gothenburg sound. “Life Disconnected” really shifts into gear after the intro segment; a heaving and dissonant march into battle that almost elicits the more brutal side of death metal greats Nile, shifting up a notch into all-out, Satyricon-esque steady, straight-ahead and evil-sounding black metal. Session drummer Mike Heller frequently impressed throughout A Void Within Existence, playing steady lines with just the right amount of flash to them, but able to completely show off when necessary for the song.
“Void Within” feels much closer in relation to Walk Beyond the Dark, leaning farther into the band’s newfound melodic dimension. The song showcases a uniquely ‘Abigail Williams’ take on the melodic black metal of contemporaries, such as Wormwitch and Wolves in the Throne Room, sounding just as vast as either and certainly oozing just as much unbridled misery. It takes on such a unique sonic identity thanks to a mixture of hauntingly beautiful, soaring string quartet passages. They wriggle melodically behind enormous walls of lush guitar, and underscored by a low, droning sawtooth synthesiser cleverly layered alongside an orchestral synth that holds down the chord changes.
Every aspect of A Void Within Existence implies the creative process involved much introspection from Ken Sorceron, surrounding the band’s seemingly ever-evolving sound over the last twenty-one years. Yet, it remains clear that the atmospheric sound of Walk Beyond the Dark is at the forefront of Sorceron’s mind during this same time, nowhere better exemplified than track five, “Talk To Your Sleep”, which sits perfectly on the equator between Abigail Williams’ sound. The song’s riffing on a single low, open string of extended range guitars, and subsequent intricate soloing, pull heavily from the band’s early metalcore roots. The syllabic, odd-time vocal-and-guitar line dance that occurs around 2:40 during the second of the song’s smoky, calm-before-the-storm drop-out sections is so Meshuggah and djent-adjacent that you almost wouldn’t believe that it could fit so well in the middle of an atmospheric black metal album. Yet, Sorceron pulls it off seamlessly. The song evolves into this beautiful, swooping string-lead section that could easily have been straight from an Osi and the Jupiter song if not for the bed of hissing “Transylvanian Hunger” guitars, and eventually back to the original low open-string riffs.
When it does eventually end, the perfectly formed and executed “Talk to Your Sleep” leaves you feeling fulfilled, like an adventurer returned home. The same can be said of the next immediate track, “Embrace the Chasm”. This is great songwriting, and easily some of Sorceron and Abigail Williams’ best yet. There’s no doubt that, among others from A Void Within Existence, both tracks will go down as fan favourites, given their masterful writing and brilliant execution.
“Embrace the Chasm” is another contender for all-timers produced by A Void Within Existence. The song starts with your typical black metal combo – Heller holds down a high-intensity blast beat, whilst dissonant tremolo-picked guitars and a choral synth outline the chord changes and pad the atmosphere. Panning is well-used here, with the double-tracked guitars and choral synths panned left and right in order to leave room for an eerie Cradle of Filth-like xylophone synth and Sorceron’s raspy vocal at the forefront, whilst also giving the song a well-needed sense of stereophonics.
The song eventually builds to a fantastically simple (but effective) little motif that nods strongly toward the chorus riff from Death’s classic “A Moment of Clarity”. This riff first appears briefly, eventually returning as the big triumphant finish for the song, fading out like a fortress burning to the ground in an enormous blaze. One could very happily listen to this riff on loop for an hour; it has this great energy to it that taps into the same part of the human psyche as riding your horse through the beautiful open ranges of Skyrim or defeating monstrous deities in Dark Souls.
What therein follows that initial introduction of this great riff is just as fantastic, though it is certainly elevated by Heller’s fantastic drumming that keeps the energy high whilst the rest of the band are more focused on the more wide-open, ambient aspect of the band’s sound. Soaring string sections pop in intermittently, the guitars following their lead as they underscore the serene, poignant beauty of the strings.
Finally, the album ends with what could easily be another heavy hitter for Abigail Williams, the quietly crestfallen “No Less than Death”. A nine-and-a-half-minute epic, the song is mainly a clean vocal affair, with Sorceron’s typical blackened screams occasionally lending some power to the music, as necessary. There were elements of this song that are strongly reminiscent of English post-metallers Conjurer’s 2022 epic “Cracks in the Pyre” – the use of dynamics to deliver a raw, emotional punch and the truly forlorn chord choices paint a dark and murky sky above the mind’s eye. However, the song is certainly Abigail Williams’ own, with the band’s own unique brand of sonic sorrow woven into the very fabric of the song’s DNA. Components as simple as the structure and metamorphosis of the song could only come from Sorceron’s mind and pool of influences, and of course the foggy, dark abyss that has surrounded Abigail Williams’ music since Walk Beyond the Dark is utterly unmistakable.
“No Less than Death” is inclined toward the darker end of things and begins largely very lowkey, with Sorceron’s dense layers of clean vocal coming very calmly and with little push or effort. The guitars are largely more restrained, and the bass is allowed to shine through very prominently in places, particularly earlier in the song. It is certainly, again, Heller’s drumming that crescendos the song from its humble beginnings into the album’s explosive final curtain.
The execution of “No Less than Death” is perfect, and precisely how “Nonexistence” ought to have panned out. “No Less than Death” sees the band allow the song to progress naturally, allowing that to happen over as much time as is necessary. This includes the solo, which is allowed to soar in all its greatness over the final two minutes of the song, eventually leading into a long fade out, whereas “Nonexistence’s” ending solo ended abruptly and leaves one wanting more.
One song was almost a little too short, as if it had even been cut down to a more traditional song length: “Nonexistence” ends with a soaring, Gilmour-esque, blues-soaked guitar solo. It naturally crescendoes the song into an explosion of forlorn, deeply emotional guitar-lead expression à la Vai, with plenty of flashy fills on the part of Heller. And yet what follows is a very modest and almost abrupt ending, as the song’s dark and airy synths simply fade out.
Abigail Williams’ second step beyond the dark does not disappoint as a successor to the band’s definitive 2019 classic. The music of A Void Within Existence acts as a moment of introspection for Sorceron as the band’s core member, exploring the sounds of the band’s earlier years and incarnations through the lens of their newfound identity within atmospheric black metal, and coincidentally is also some of Abigail Williams’ best to date. Though the longer-form tracks “Talk to Yours Sleep”, “Embrace the Chasm”, and “No Less than Death” that make up the latter portion of A Void Within Existence are the best executed for how they allow the songs to flourish, tracks such as “Void Within” and “Nonexistence” are still perfect compositions; my one and only critique being the unrealised potential for the latter.
The production here is spot on, and whilst everyone performs on top form, this album would not be half the masterpiece it is without the incredible drumming of Mike Heller. Heller’s musical drumming is the beating heart within every one of these songs, pushing Sorceron’s musical narratives along without being intrusively flashy, flashing his muscles behind the kit only when strictly necessary within the context of the music. If this is any indication of the future for Abigail Williams, I must say, I am extremely excited to see where it goes.
8/10
A Void Within Existence releases through Agonia Records on the 18th July and can be pre-ordered here.