Luminous Vault - Animate the Emptiness (2022)

Electronic elements and black metal is often met with disdain. Atonal EDM beats over blackened shenanigans make acts like Psyclon Nine and Mora Prokaza questionable, while the guitar-less synth overload of Golden Ashes and Wreche are often met with mixed reception. Perhaps more successfully, acts like Blut aus Nord and Dkharmakhaoz incorporate cold industrial flourishes to the raw guitar tone, creating an uncompromisingly obsidian sound. Electronic is divisive, but Luminous Vault does it right, creating twisted and otherworldly environs of flashing colors and cosmic spaciousness, backboned by the crushing density of colliding worlds.

Both harsh and ethereal in equal measure, Animate the Emptiness is a product of intricacy and abstractness without sacrificing its listenable qualities. Consisting of Artificial Brain/Aeviterne/Fawn Limbs bassist Samuel Smith and Oneirogen mastermind and guitarist Mario Diaz de León,1 both on vocal duty, New York’s Luminous Vault rides the razor’s edge of electronic ethereality, blasting mechanized beats, and crushing death/black, always bolstered by stellar songwriting. Animate the Emptiness is as intricate and abstract as its name suggests, wavering radiants of pulsing colors amid the empty abyss. It is far too easy for black/death songwriting to fall to the wayside if it’s masked by a slick sheen of electronic effects, but Luminous Vault accomplishes both with extreme precision.