As much as death metal changes, it also stays the same, but Ectovoid represent it well enough with strong writing and energy echoing through the ether.
Release date: January 9, 2026 | Everlasting Spew Records | Facebook | Bandcamp
I’ve been over my leeriness and tiredness with death metal enough that to repeat it here would be redundant for some readers, but to summarize: damn, the genre’s boring sometimes. Of course, I love being proven wrong, even better when it has a bunch of toppings thrown on that enhance the experience so much, you can’t deny it.
The good news is that Alabama’s Ectovoid do just enough to firmly plant themselves and their work into the latter category – indeed, this is a death metal album worth your time – even as it rides the rocket of tropes deep into a perilous black hole. To some, that’s a comfort: gruff and throaty vocals, dense guitars, and fast-as-shit drums are like a warm hug to fans. It’s me, I am some, but you know, I just need a liiiiittle more to get invested like other genre influences or supreme melody in the metal.
Thankfully, for me there’s a substantial amount to chew on. In Unreality’s Coffin is a hard name and the cover art is even harder, a portent that the music itself should be hard as well. It is, to varying degrees. With members from bands like Seraphic Entombment and Father Befouled, not to mention this particular band starting back in 2010, Ectovoid are no slouches. Some of the slower groove and deliberation from Seraphic Entombment even makes it onto here and, surprise, that’s the stuff I like the most.
In Unreality’s Coffin starts out fine. The whole thing is nine tracks and almost 45 minutes, once considered the perfect album length. The first half of the album is a churning, swirling warm-up – “Dissonance Corporeum” is a bold entrance with tight riffs and immediate energy that doesn’t take its time materializing. The structure isn’t shocking, but what Ectovoid do within it is worthy of illumination. Tracks “Formless Seeking Form” and “Irradiated Self” power through with tactile riffing, but the former goes on a bit long for what it shows and the latter is missing some flare for me. A real Goldilocks situation here.
The main event though is the title track. Now this is some damn death metal. Here, the groove is very pronounced, lovingly constructed, and provides exactly what I like in stuff like this. It makes my ears perk up every time I loop this album and reminds me of the ridiculously fun writing bands like Celestial Sanctuary or Tribal Gaze get into (or Necrot who Ectovoid fancy themselves a FFO for). This song starts a streak where Ectovoid come to a climax and put their strengths at the forefront. “Erroneous Birth” is another ripper that is massively ‘on’ from the first second to the last. Cool touches like the guitars harmonizing with each other and rhythmic shifts help color in this beefy track. “It Is Without Shape” is a neat instrumental that focuses more on motion and progression without vocals or overly conventional song structure getting in the way. I wish there was more of this spirit on In Unreality’s Coffin.
“In Anguished Levitation” is the final song and it’s a hell of a one to go out on, a culmination of the whole album baked into a seven-minute banger that isn’t afraid to let things marinate a bit or shift things up with less dedication to seamlessness or flow (it works well for them). In that sense, the whole of In Unreality’s Coffin is a slower burn than I would have preferred my death metal to be, but what amounted to a more modest start to me ended up capped off with an active and worthwhile ending that used all its elements to great effect. It’s worth noting that this is the band’s first album in almost ten full years which is quite some time to be away and while I don’t have the historical context needed to put it up against previous work, it’s a return that the band should be proud of regardless.
As the album loops again while I wrap this up, I actually think the back half helps enhance the front by showing the growth and persistence that band are capable of, not only in the sense of the payoff, but an almost cinematic sense. Here are all these elements and things that In Unreality’s Coffin sets up initially, and here’s where it all goes as the action comes to a head. It certainly seems like a better bet than the Stranger Things finale. Ectovoid once again got me out of my death metal curmudgeon shell a bit to enjoy something that may not break the mold, but fills it with alluring, vantablack matter from the realm they lurched out from.
