Album Review: Voices in Vain, 'The Only Love I Know'

Voices in Vain, The Only Love I Know Credit: Courtesy

(Self-released, digital)

Where soothsayers and religious prophets once made all things doom their province, no one shouts about the apocalypse these days quite like metal bands. From Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral” to “Twilight of the Thunder God” by Amon Amarth, headbangers love an ode to ruin and the world’s end. Factor in recent real-life bad omens such as scientists moving the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the rise of authoritarianism around the globe, the ghoulish creep of AI, and, well, let’s be honest: There’s enough doom going around to fill a black hole.

With their sophomore LP The Only Love I Know, Burlington metal and hardcore act Voices in Vain aim to fill that obsidian hole as they preach/scream “the end is nigh” with a distorted megaphone. From first track “Turned to Ash,” where vocalist Jeremy Urtz howls, “This dystopian hellscape consumes everyone and everything,” to the album’s final song, “Unheard No Longer” — with its cheery coda: “There cannot be peace without violence / There cannot be freedom without death / Cut off the heads of the fucking tyrants” — The Only Love I Know is the sound of a thin line being crossed. The album’s themes bring to mind the Antonio Gramsci quote, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

The only thing metalheads love more than screaming into the void is creating endless subgenres for their music. Black metal, thrash, grindcore, glam, blackgaze, screamo, power violence, Kawaii metal, fucking Christian death metal … there’s a decent chance that if you make up a metal category, it probably already exists. (I’ll try: Chaucer metal – punishing, powerful songs depicting the events in The Canterbury Tales. I won’t even Google to see if I’m right.)

Voices in Vain favor the heavier end of the spectrum. Melding various strains of metal with an antiestablishment vibe, they create a sort of metalcore fusion full of Lamb of God-like dynamic shifts in odd time signatures and hardcore breakbeats and grooves. That synthesis comes through on “Cyclical Hell,” with its razor-sharp slashes of guitar and drummer Scott Mullin’s frenetic, pounding beat.

For such a brutal-sounding record, it possesses a surprising amount of melody. Urtz spends most of the album seemingly shredding his vocal cords with his powerful roar, but when he does flash his melodic side, it’s wonderfully effective. Guitarists Lucas Tabshey and Ross Temple weave their riffs, creating a scythe of pure distortion that can cut through the band’s heaviest grooves.

“Unheard No Longer” is the strongest exhibit of the group’s power and artistry. Pushing toward progressive metal, Voices in Vain construct an M.C. Escher-like maze of movements that culminates in a heavy groove so good, one could be forgiven for launching into an ill-advised headbanging session.

What truly powers The Only Love I Know is outrage. These are songs fueled by seething, vindictive anger and a growing desire to reach for the sweet, sweet embrace of violence. On “Control/Erase,” when Urtz howls, “In your bloody hands — the only love I know,” the record’s dark, nihilistic heart shines like a flashlight from the pit of a basement.

The Only Love I Know is available on all major streaming services.