Strictly limited to a one-time run of fifty cassettes, the second in 13th Apostle's conceptual trilogy of releases materializes here in an electrocuting shock of existential horror, following the ferocious interrogation of power electronics and Broken Flag-influenced extremity of 2022's "Post Annihilism". Presented with a suitably minimalist, appropriately grotesque visual aesthetic, "Swallow The Void And Erase Your Soul" features four tracks that stream through your neurons like a wave of barbed wire and carbonized human remains, a sustained scream of world-weary loathing and spiritual exhaustion.
It's a goddamn nightmare.
It's also a distinct shift from the piercing onslaught of extreme power electronics of the first tape. Swallow The Void... erupts with massive bomb-blast heaviosity and ultra-distorted power that points towards the most putrid and pungent depths of death industrial. The opening track "N.U.I. (Infinite Ego Death Cell)" promptly batters the listener with steady, sinister blasts of low-end electronic crush as more complex rhythms emerge, joined by gnarly, teeth-gnashing vocals. An atmosphere of pure doom and desolation. Shifting between spare concussive dread and hypnotic evil. Treated samples of cosmic horror are woven into the rotting fabric of 13th Apostle's sound, and mutates into something more abrasive and caustic as it segues into the skull-drill electronic skree of "Ant In The Afterbirth". A war-scape of unyielding bass-blast, corrosive distortion, and increasingly chaotic death industrial.
The other half instantly picks back up as the title track drops you into a pitch-black abattoir of swirling ambient filth and metallic scrape, followed by a persistent, insanely distorted high-voltage deathdrone. Crackling electricity whips and dances through the air, distant sirens howl mindlessly in the depths. The sound shifts beneath the serrated, buzzing synth-drone, a vast yawning maw of devouring blackness slowly opening beneath your feet as 13th Apostle increases the violence of the churn. Everything drops out as horrifying screams explode from nowhere, opening the door to the hideous sampled monologue that possesses "At Least You Thought Of Me". Recollections of depravity and desecration drift like a foul fog across deep, tectonic pulsations; while the closing piece at first feels less frenzied than what came previously, it crawls deeper under your subcutaneous layer than anything else on this tape. It's a singular experience; Swallow sometimes broaches the unforgiving and explicit viciousness of Slogun and Genocide Organ, at other moments touching on the rot and desiccation of Atrax Morgue and Slaughter Productions, but it is ultimately much, much more intimate. It sits close to you. Whispering in your ear as the stench of the electronic carnage slowly begins to burn away. Leaving you with nothing.
Total hell.
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