Hailing from Tokyo, Japan's IN NOTHINGNESS formed in 2014 and existed under the moniker The Eternal Nothingness until 2016. The work of one Lord Nothingness, the first recording under the new moniker IN NOTHINGNESS came during the autumn of 2017 with the Into the Nothingness... EP. Shockingly developed, the band's debut EP presented a newcomer well versed in the old ways of melodic death metal - specifically, the mid '90s boom that started in Sweden and spread across Europe during the rest of the decade.
Alas, that four-song/20-minute EP was but a tease for IN NOTHINGNESS' grandiose debut album, Black Sun Funeral. Immediately and breathtakingly, Black Sun Funeral digs deep into one's heartstrings and utterly possesses with its majestic 'n' melodic surge & sway. Indeed, the spectres of melodic death metal's most classic bands - equally early Dark Tranquility and In Flames but also Sweden's Eucharist, Gates of Ishtar, and Night in Gales - loom large over IN NOTHINGNESS, but the mainman's songwriting simply STUNS with its wild 'n' winding creativity. The hooks are HUGE yet never too commercial - again, this is DEATH METAL above all - and the leads have a hummable, almost-folkloric feel, but thankfully stay far away from folk metal cliches. Most of all, you can FEEL the emotion - darkness, desire, death - coursing through IN NOTHINGNESS' execution, which is feverish and loose, given grit by the album's sympathetic production. And, after a mere 40 minutes of magickal mesmerism, you'll want to return to Black Sun Funeral again and again and again...
Many elder styles of metal in general and death metal in particular have been resurrected in these increasingly reflective times. However, so few records can channel the bristling brilliance of the original melodic death metal wave quite like IN NOTHINGNESS' Black Sun Funeral. Bear witness to what's bound to be a modern classic!
