There are records that invite you in gently, and then there’s “VOiD”, which practically grabs you by the collar before you’ve even had chance to get comfortable.
Godsticks’ seventh album is billed as their darkest, heaviest and most uncompromising yet, and for once that sort of talk isn’t just press release inflation. This thing feels claustrophobic, twitchy and deeply uneasy from the off, like it’s reflecting back a world that has lost any sense of balance or nuance and decided instead just to disappear into its own noise. The result is a record that feels jagged, tense and, crucially, impossible to ignore.
“M.I.A.” goes straight in with no intro at all, like it simply can’t wait. “Am I hearing voices?” asks the first line, and from there you’re immediately dropped into the maelstrom. It sets the tone perfectly too, because this is an album that never really settles, never really offers comfort, and never once sounds like it particularly wants to make life easy for you.
“Hold Back” follows with guitar work that is dark and classy in equal measure. That’s one of the keys to what makes Godsticks so compelling here. For all the heaviness and disquiet, there’s a real sense of control about it. Nothing is thrown around carelessly. Even when it sounds like the songs are on the brink of collapse, there’s a precision underneath it.
“Watch It Burn” has something genuinely quirky and somewhat original about it. That’s not always easy to pull off in modern prog, where plenty of bands can play like demons but end up disappearing into the same blur of technical competence. Godsticks don’t do that here. There’s a weirdness running through the whole record that makes it feel like its own strange beast.
That comes through again on “Master Of A Plan”, where the harmonies are downright unsettling. “I got a whole other vibe,” goes the vocal, and it isn’t wrong. The song feels skewed somehow, like it’s tilting just enough to keep you off balance, and that sense of discomfort is one of the album’s great strengths.
“Torn Again” pushes further into modern prog territory, but does it with real purpose. The way it builds is what matters. This isn’t just complexity for the sake of showing off. There’s a proper sense of momentum to it, the kind that keeps pulling you further in even when you’re not entirely sure where the floor is.
Then “Can’t Withstand” arrives with one hell of a first line: “Lying here filled with dread, I could easily put a bullet to my head.” It’s brutal, obviously, but what follows is just as striking, because the guitar work here is genuinely sensational. It cuts through all the darkness with real class and proves again that this band know exactly how to shape tension into something musical rather than merely bleak.
By the time “Ruthless Coward” rolls around, one thing is obvious: this is an album where, on paper, nothing should work and nothing quite makes sense, but somehow it compels. Maybe that’s the trick Godsticks are pulling here. “VOiD” isn’t interested in easy resolutions or neat little payoffs. It wants to leave you feeling a bit wrong-footed, and it does that brilliantly.
The centrepiece is the two-part “Talking Through Walls”, and “Pt. 1” seems to dig even deeper inside than the rest of the album already has. It’s introspective, tense and weirdly intimate, as though the band are excavating something buried under all that weight and distortion.
And then “Pt. 2” drags you deeper still. If the first part opens the wound, this one stares into it. It’s properly immersive stuff, the kind of piece that justifies the progressive tag because it actually goes somewhere emotionally rather than just moving through sections.
Even the slower moments don’t offer much comfort. “Hope Is Burning” closes things with the line that “being alive is dragging me down,” and that tells you plenty about the emotional climate here. But even then, Godsticks manage to make the bleakness feel artful rather than oppressive. There’s something oddly beautiful in how all this darkness is shaped.
Darran Charles has spoken about the record as a retreat from a world full of division, noise and people no longer listening to one another, and that mood hangs over every second of “VOiD”. Add in the vital contributions from Tom Price and Gavin Bushell, plus the fresh perspective of new bassist Francis George, and you get a record that sounds alive in all the right ways, even when it’s staring into the abyss.
“VOiD” is not an album that bends towards accessibility, and frankly that’s part of its power. It is dark, demanding, unsettling and often utterly brilliant. More to the point, it proves that Godsticks remain one of the few bands in this area capable of making music that feels genuinely unpredictable while still landing with real emotional force. On a record full of things that shouldn’t work but somehow do, that might be the cleverest trick of all.
RATING 8/10
