Canadian cosmonauts Endspace make First Contact with their sci-fi black metal debut album. In this space, they can hear you scream.
Release Date: October 2nd, 2026 | Transcending Obscurity Records | Bandcamp | Label Instagram
Space; the final frontier, the endless void, the vacuum, the cosmic gulf that dwarfs everything each and every one of us has done or ever will or experience. It’s fascinating, unnerving, and also absolutely metal as hell. That fact has been understood at least since Black Sabbath dropped “Planet Caravan”, most likely even before, and in more recent times black metal especially has reveled in this knowledge thanks to the efforts of bands like Darkspace, Mesarthim, and their ilk. The fresh-faced Canadian duo Endspace likewise understands this imminently despite their recent formation, and it’s with this knowledge that they make First Contact.
Granted, the individuals who comprise Endspace aren’t totally new to making alien (and awesome) music; they hail from Fractal Generator, who themselves I’m a fan of. On First Contact, the musicians behind Endspace largely eschew that project’s more grindy approach for black metal that feels extraterrestrial. Riffs run the gamut from more down-the-line, Darkthrone-inspired drones to more angular, Thorns-esque assaults, and at times even venture into death metal-inflected atmospheres.
It’s the additional dressings of First Contact, though, that really give the album that feeling of cosmic strangeness and compelling, gravitational charm. The opening track (“First Transmission”; every track is a transmission) kicks off in fairly standard black metal fashion, but the weird production on the vocals and synth work just feel… off. Like Endspace may not be coming from anywhere humans have explored. “Second Transmission”, by turn, completely shoots off into seldom-charted regions. A roughly produced technical guitar line underpins heavily vocoded, cybernetic vocals that could easily be emanating from a glitching HAL 9000 or MOTHER, while a wailing operatic line occasionally cuts eerily through the tumult.
“Third Transmission” and “Seventh Transmission” feel like the places where Endspace hews closest to their Fractal Generator heritage, with the former having me thinking of Morbid Angel just as much as anything black metal. The latter is just plain caustic and dissonant, and makes for a great late album nova of aggression. Meanwhile, “Eighth Transmission” fizzles along on a lo-fi synth tone that almost feels like an old NES game set in the uncaring vacuum of space before the guitars augment the assault. The album-bisecting “Fifth Transmission” doesn’t even feature guitars, existing entirely as a trio of frenetic drums, sawing synths, and vocals processed to the point of humanity.
There’s nary a moment where First Contact feels ‘normal’, even within the experimental realms of black metal. From the first notes to those queasy moments of ambience cutting through the violence, balancing melting, tense guitar notes with a weirdly pleasant synth glide, Endspace clearly set out to make First Contact feel like a (uh) transmission from somewhere outside the boundaries of space that we’ve observed. It’s hard to tell if the transmissions are malevolent or just operating on a plane we as simple humans aren’t familiar with, but with their constant shifts in aggression, production, and sometimes even metallic subgenre, the best we listeners can do is look on in curious awe.
Yeah, First Contact is a hell of a cool debut album from Endspace, and anyone who likes their black metal tinged with a balance of cosmic horror and sci-fi futurism would do well to seek out its lightless void. It’s not going to be the kind of album I can imagine too many people picking individual favorite tracks from (diverse as each transmission is), because the sum experience is just too intriguing to segment in such a way. It may be much more Event Horizon than Project Hail Mary, but the strangeness at play keeps the experience from just feeling like an exercise in “space is spooky” theatrics. Endspace genuinely feels like they emanate from another world. On First Contact, I’ve heard things you people might struggle to believe, and here’s hoping this new project lasts much better than tears in rain.
