Album Review: Iapetus - The Mother Void

 

Seven years is a long time to leave a story unfinished, but Iapetus have never been a band in a hurry. Sharing a name with the Titan of Greek myth and the strange, two-toned moon of Saturn that bears his name, the New York duo deal in songs measured in quarter-hours and themes measured in light years. The Mother Void is the long-awaited final chapter of a trilogy that has quietly earned them a devoted following among progressive death metal fans, and it arrives with a guest list that would make bands with far bigger budgets blush.

 

Iapetus began in 2010 as a solo project for vocalist, guitarist, and bassist Matthew Cerami, before guitarist, keyboardist and drum arranger Jordan Navarro came aboard to make it a partnership. A first EP followed in 2012, but it was the self-released The Long Road Home in 2017 that put them on the map, and 2019’s The Body Cosmic, with Ne Obliviscaris drummer Dan Presland behind the kit, confirmed them as one of the most ambitious independent acts in the genre. That record’s meditation on humanity’s place in a vast universe is the natural springboard for this one, and the move to Willowtip gives the closing chapter the platform it deserves.

 

The supporting cast is remarkable. Eluveitie vocalist Fabienne Erni provides vocals and additional vocal arrangements, featuring on both singles, Red Giant, and the title track. Erni, who also co-founded and fronts Illumishade, is an inspired choice: a voice capable of both fragility and enormous power, which is exactly what a story about a mother and her son demands. Invent Animate’s Brody Taylor Smith handles drums, Ne Obliviscaris guitarist Benjamin Baret contributes a solo to TON, and Caelestra’s Frank Harper adds vocals to the same track, with Ethan Navarro and synth and effects man Mark Lazeski rounding out the credits. Alexander Backlund recorded the album, with John Douglass tracking drums at Vorticist Studios, while Fascination Street Studios take the production credit, Jens Bogren mixing and Tony Lindgren mastering. Vanessa Lemen’s cover art completes the package.

 

The concept, in the band’s own words, is “the story of a mother and a son; of mankind and the cosmos,” and of “feeling destined to failure in a world designed to destroy.” They call it “our most personal record to date” and insist it is “meant to be digested in whole,” which, with four of its seven tracks running past eleven minutes and a total close to seventy, is less a suggestion than a requirement.

Parturition opens with a short, scene-setting prelude whose title – the act of giving birth – plants the mother-and-son thread from the very first moment, before The Mother Void itself takes over. The second single and thirteen minutes long, the title track pairs Cerami’s guttural roar with Erni’s soaring voice, and it lays out the album’s central tension between the intimate and the infinite with real confidence.

Aniara is the second-longest track on the record at over seventeen minutes, and its title is no accident. Harry Martinson’s 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name follows a spacecraft knocked off course and drifting endlessly into the void, and on a record about humanity’s fragility against the cosmos, the reference could hardly be more fitting. I would expect this to be the album’s most patient and immersive passage.

Red Giant was the first single, and at almost twelve minutes it is the most compact of the record’s four epics. Named for the swollen, dying stage of a star’s life, it is a natural showcase for Erni, and its accompanying video made the strongest possible case for the album when it arrived in August. If you want to know whether this record is for you, start here.

Énouement is a brief interlude of under two minutes, its title borrowed from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, where it describes the bittersweet feeling of arriving in the future and finding out how things turn out, without being able to tell your past self. For an album about a mother, a son and a story reaching its end, it is a beautifully chosen word.

TON is the colossus. At almost nineteen minutes, it is the longest song on the album and the one with the most moving parts, Baret’s guitar solo and Harper’s vocals woven into its structure. Ne Obliviscaris fans will be particularly keen to hear it, given that band’s previous ties to Iapetus, and it looks set to be the record’s grand climax.

The World Be Undone closes the album at under five minutes, a comparatively brief epilogue after an hour of upheaval. Ending on something so restrained after a track of that size is a brave choice, and the title suggests acceptance rather than triumph. It is the kind of ending that lingers long after the last note has faded.

The obvious caveat is time. Seventy minutes of long-form progressive death metal is a serious commitment, and while the band are upfront about wanting it heard in one sitting, not every listener will be able, or willing, to give it that. The duo’s approach is also well established by now, and anyone hoping for a radical change of direction may find the shape of these songs familiar.

But familiarity is not a flaw when the formula is this well executed, and on the evidence of its singles, The Mother Void brings the trilogy home with the scale, heart, and patience it deserves. It is a record for headphones, dark skies and long journeys, and a fitting final chapter from one of progressive death metal’s most quietly ambitious bands.