Review

Lord Gorgoroth, Nameless Black Void (2023)

An earlier Lord Gorgoroth release is called Black Fucking Noise, which is the most perfect generic fuck-you reminiscent (deliberately, I think) of the blown out quality of raw black metal but with an even more abysmal lack of fidelity. It’s also the ideal descriptor for the non-genre of muffled and degraded no-fi sounds found here. Lord Gorgoroth is a spin-off project by the ever prolific and consistently interesting Lord Cernunnos, who (mostly) makes noise music and is based in the Pacific northwest in the US. This EP of four shortish tracks is tagged as “Abysmally Lo-Fi Drone/Dark Ambient.” The key term is abysmal, suggestive of the sensation of something dreadful but also of the abyss – deep, almost immeasurably so, unfathomable in both the physical and existential sense. Nameless Black Void is a fitting title, combining rumbling drone and numbed feeling. This is the sound of entropy, of petrified ambience and decomposition. Despite being almost suicidally bleak there is something approaching comfort in them. Repeated listens reveal slight differences and variations, albeit buried, between the tracks’ subterranean tectonic shifts. There are layers of blurred textures and distorted strata, slow motion crunches and clicks that attempt to break thru the buzzing roar then give up. What could be voices and instruments are mixed so low that they may just be aural hallucinations. Like being trapped in a darkened underground shelter while the sound of muffled radioactive wind reassuringly scrapes the planet’s surface.