Artist......: Venomous Echoes
Album.......: Dysmor
Year........: 2025
Genre.......: Black Metal

Type........: Retail
Label.......: I, Voidhanger Records
Language....: English

Source......: WEB
Encoder.....: libFLAC 1.5.0
Quality.....: 956 kbps avg. / 44.1kHz / 2 channels

Tracks......: 6
Playtime....: 00:45:23
Size........: 326.49MB

R.Date......: 2025-02-27
S.Date......: 2025-02-28
Url.........: http://tidal.com/browse/album/420113544

01. Wall of Memories and Despair                    6:21
02. Dysmor                                          6:21
03. Groped by Spectres                              5:47
04. Broken                                          8:21
05. Deafeated and Withered Creation                 6:56
06. The Begetter                                   11:37

I've told many friends, both online and in-person,
that for death metal to connect with me these days,
it’s got to go for my throat in unflinching,
unapologetic ways, and that usually involves taking
one of two avenues. Either the artist in question has
to go all-out musically in a way that’s memorable yet
uncompromisingly heavy, brutal, technical, chaotic, or
all of the above, or the music has to come from a
place of personal sincerity and experience. With
Venomous Echoes, the project of sole mastermind Ben
Vanweelden, it’s a maelstrom of frightening
proportions brought on by Vanweelden’s personal
struggles with body dysmorphia.1 Dysmor, the project’s
third album, further explores a topic that far too
many people experience in silence with unfaltering
intensity.

In just a hair under 46 minutes, Dysmor tells the tale
of an unfortunate soul trapped in a hell of their own
mental and physical image. Riffs swirl and undulate
like slimy, breathing walls trapping you within its
calculating vortex, with Vanweelden snarling and
screaming in a barely hinged fashion, recalling both
The Curator (Portal) and Peter Benjamin (Voices) in
delivery and intensity. Programmed blastbeats pummel
you into and through the shattered earth. Even the
saxophone that opens up 'Walls of Memories and
Despair' warns you that things aren't going to be okay
going forward. But these things alone, while all good
and everything that metalheads love and crave, aren’t
going to be enough to make a lasting impact.

No, the real prize here is how well everything ties
together thematically. It’s not easy to write music
that's barely tied together with the most frayed of
twine, yet have it get its message across, but
Vanheelden made it flow somehow. The odd groove that
happens in the middle of 'Walls of Memories and
Despair' would have easily derailed the insanity that
precedes and follows it, but it works. “Broken” starts
of with a tranquil-enough piano melody before even
that warps and distorts into something sinister and
uncomfortable. Speaking of uncomfortable, the sad,
subdued sobbing that punctuates just past the halfway
mark of closing highlight 'The Begetter' indicates
that something terrible is going to happen, with the
following riffs and closing atmospherics that would
make The Great Old Ones proud pretty much confirming
all suspicions.

Dysmor sounds appropriately grimy and discommoding,
barely kissing against aural cacophony but not quite
going beyond that line. With riffs slicing and
julienning and a pissed-off drum machine laying waste
to everything, anyone could see Dysmor getting
swallowed up by a cyclone of its own design, but
somehow it's barely constrained enough to keep it
together for the listener to hear. What can be a bit
fatiguing is the length of some of the more
atmospheric passages. By trimming some of the endings
a bit (like the keyboard swirls that occur in the last
almost two minutes of 'Deafeated and Withered
Creation'),2 it would help out a little with the
overall impact.

But an impact this definitely made. I often worry
whenever an artist writes music detailing a rather
personal struggle, as it could very easily be
heavy-handed or horribly delivered. But like An
Isolated Mind before him, Vanweelden crafted an album
that simultaneously crushes skulls and slices nerves.
Ask anyone who’s ever experienced body dysmorphia, and
they’ll tell you that no amount of external body
shaming can compare to the hell of those who are
beating themselves up,3 and Dysmor lays that all out
to bare with amazing results. I sincerely both applaud
Vanweelden for his bravery, intensity, and honesty in
communicating his battles with body dysmorphia through
his art, but I’m also pulling for his continued
efforts in overcoming a silent, yet all-too-common,
struggle.