Criminally underrated, it feels even by Body Void themselves, Ruins was my introduction to the then Bay Area, now Vermont based “drone punk” trio. Preceding the wrenching direct address of gender dysphoria in their 2018 follow-up I Live Inside a Burning House, or the overt politicism of this year’s You Will Know the Fear You Forced Upon Us, the subject matter may appear here somewhat more garden-variety sludge metal in its existential torment, mirroring the themes of Grief, Corrupted and Noothgrush, but the starry backdrop to the cover image should not be misinterpreted as mere aestheticism. The sonic and lyrical affect throughout Ruins is entirely aligned with Thacker’s post-Schopenhauerian cosmic pessimism: “dark metphysics of negation, nothingness, and the non-human.” This the the blackness in which Thacker locates black metal, and the blackness of Keiji Haino’s So, Black is Myself , and its single track, “Wisdom that bless I, who live in the spiral joy born at the utter end of a black prayer.”
Within these pieces is located the swirling triumvirate of apotheosis, aphaireisis and apophasis. I am replete with such emptiness. I am empty with such horrific fullness. I feel everything, and thus I feel nothing. I am body. I am void.
Crushed beneath the tide
Of emotions
Chest open wide
I am the planet
Surface scorched
Surrounded by ruins
My body filled with darkness
Eternal storm
Lost inside Jupiter’s eye
Razed
Eternity
Lives inside me
Watch me born from a star
Shoved dripping from a cosmic nursery
Eternity
Collapses inside me
Never never again
Look beneath our patterned existence
Monolith
Wyrdsystyr 