Vacuous – “In His Blood”

Vacuous. By definition means to have no emotion. Mindless. Empty. Or to lack content. They do it all on the stage – though there was that ONE photo of the band smiling together after a show. VERY suspect haha! The imagery that the band has paired with their tunes are nothing short of some good ol’ days on rottendotcom. Blackened blood stains paint more than a picture of massacre, it’s silhouettes the band to realms of the original SAW movies.

Relapse Records, February 28th, 2025 – Vacuous releases “In His Blood”. First release on the new label. A London England, juggernaut, bringing a slaughter house, blood bath, gutted…slit throat aggression. Constant chug good time – rolling some samples throughout the album – adding the diverse energy they bring. First listen MIDNIGHT came to mind. After a few more and getting into the “like artist” – Morbific, Stenched, Dripping Decay, Coffin Rot, Pissgrave are noted amongst them. While I’m not one to dive deep into some bands lyrics – They present an image and sustain it throughout. To the point – hidden or depth lyrically, like reading into the thought journal of someone from Arkham Asylum (Ha, Batman!) Or someone speaking a voice for those who aren’t able or afraid – inspiration from the darkest of areas to seek redemption. And like most metal guys, they are nice as hell! I took the hail-mary throw and reached out to the band via email – I received an email response right away from the band (Michael) and they were just letting me know to, send away and they will work me into their heavy media schedule – with as quickly as they got back, I felt like a VIP, sidestage watching. I’ve left the quick questions down below – they peak quickly into the band and tap into the fun side of things. And yes. The band is TECHNICALLY on wikipedia haha.

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Below the quick interview with Michael from Vacuous:

What do you listen to when it’s not Vacuous?
“All kinds of stuff, depending on the day. Just looking at my phone now, over the past week, I’ve been listening to Ruins of Beverast, Deathspell Omega, Crippling Alcoholism, Ethel Cain, Lifelover, Rope Sect, Negative Plane, The Cure…so a few different things. Our vocalist Jo listens to a fair amount of hip hop, and our drummer Max is really into country music and Rush. So yeah, we’re all over the place.”

How’d the band come to be?
“I met our vocalist Jo, through a mutual acquaintance in the London scene, who knew that I was looking to start an extreme metal band. Jo was already jamming with a guy called Damian, who ended up being our first bass player. So that was the original band with me on guitar, Jo on drums/vocals and Damian on bass. We spent some time figuring out what we wanted to do and ended up recording a demo in our rehearsal space, which came out in 2020, just as lockdown was starting. Since we couldn’t play shows, we spent most of the covid period working on material and developing our songwriting skills, which led to the “Katabasis” EP in November 2020. As we carried on writing new material, we realised the songs were getting too challenging for us to carry on as a three piece, so Jo decided to focus solely on vocals and Max joined us on drums in 2021. Similarly, the guitar parts were getting more complex and ambitious so we recruited Ezra on 2nd guitar. In late 2021, we started playing our first shows and then recorded our debut album “Dreams of Dysphoria”, which came out the following year. In the meantime, Damian left the band for personal reasons and Zak took over bass duties. We then recorded “In His Blood” in late 2023/early 2024 and ended up getting signed to Relapse, which pretty much brings us to where we are now.”

Random fact that isn’t on Wiki?
“Are we on Wikipedia? If not, someone’s gotta put us on there! Random fact: our drummer Max is the only member of the band who has played every single Vacuous show. The rest of us all had to miss one show at one point or another for various reasons. Hasn’t happened in a while though, luckily!”

Favorite song to play live?
“Changes all the time. I’m really excited for “Contraband” to be in our live set. It’s a really different song for us, with its driving post-punk beat. We played it at a show last year and it went down pretty well so we’re stoked to keep playing it after the album is out. “Matriarchal Blood” and “Fermentation” are two older songs that are staples in our set and always fun to play.”

Favorite bands you’ve played with so far?
“Quite a few. Undergang is a cool one. Ascended Dead were really sick. We played with Unyielding Love recently, who really blew me away.”

New album. New single. Why “In His Blood”. First?
“It’s a short song. It has a really catchy hook, you can. Just seemed like a really bold and obvious way to start promoting the album.
Our last album started with a really slow, moody and atmospheric song that builds up. We wanted to do something that was the complete opposite of that and just goes straight into it and hits you with the blast beats as soon as you hit “play”.”

One thing a fan would take away from seeing you Live?
“It will be loud and fast. If you heard us make a mistake, remember – no, you didn’t. Jo is shorter in real life than you might think.”

Favorite Snack.?
“Reese’s peanut butter cups”

Music guilty pleasure, we listen but we don’t judge.
“No such thing as a guilty pleasure. It’s OK to like questionable and uncool stuff, no need to be ashamed. I have a Creed CD in my car that gets played quite a lot!”

Tour?
“We are doing a UK headlining tour in April to support the album. We’ll be joined by the French Black/Crustpunk/metal band Cavalerie – check them out if you don’t know them already. We’ve then got some EU festivals lined up later in the year. Hopefully more stuff to be confirmed/announced in the near future too!”

Next Step?
“Album comes out on 28 Feb. We’ve got a release show at Life After Death Fest in London to celebrate. After that we got the tour I mentioned earlier.
We’ve already started writing new music, so we’ll try to make time to work on that this year. Too early to give a release timeframe but it’s in the works!”

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“In the UK, this movement became the “New Wave of British Death Metal”, fronted by Mortuary Spawn, Vacuous and Celestial Sanctuary, this name being coined by Tom Cronin, of Celestial Sanctuary, in order to separate these hardcore-indebted bands from the country’s prior movements.”

Via the death metal wikipedia page

Yes it’s on Vinyl – if you’ve been following along, I’ve been recently fond of vinyl and Vacuous has a long line of some gorgeous ones. The variant for the album “Dreams of Dysphoria”, superb. “In His Blood” isn’t excluded. I’ve linked the music video for it down below. And also the second single from the album entitled “Contraband”.

Favorite song off the album, the final track “No Longer Human”. It’s the perfect level of violence and know the 20 year old me would be moving that pit, wall to wall, circle upon circle. So definitely a banger and recommended listen. It would be incredible to see them play stateside eventually.

Until the next album.

-S. Hernandez