Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

Black/death experimental band Emptiness are sharing “The Clash of Forces” as the lead single from their forthcoming seventh full-length album Nowhere Speaks. While the album describes a world beyond human reach, “The Clash of Forces”  is not about observing that world from a safe distance. The song is evidence of intrusion, another layer pressing through into the visible. No distance between sound and source.

Nowhere Speaks comes out July 17th, 2026 on Season of Mist. Pre-order & pre-save: https://orcd.co/emptinessnowherespeaks

“The Clash of Forces” is also the first glimpse of what the recording process actually meant for Nowhere Speaks. The whole album, save for vocals, keyboards and additional effects, was played live in the studio, after four years of preparation, rehearsals and tests to ensure the music could be performed with the right weight and intention. This is not a production detail so much as a commitment to a specific kind of tension, the kind that does not survive being assembled in pieces. Emptiness’ previous album, Vide (2021), had no distortion, was sung entirely in French, and existed at the edge of silence; Nowhere Speaks moves in the opposite direction, and does so deliberately, opening exactly where Nothing But The Whole (2014) cut off mid-riff and closing by looping back to that album’s opening riff.

Tracklist:
1. Nothing but the Whole (Part 2) (01:19)
2. The Threat (04:07)
3. Nowhere Speaks (05:37)
4. Darkness Commands (01:02)
5. Words to Wind (08:24)
6. One Must See All (01:29)
7. When the Whole Arrives (05:43)
8. The Clash of Forces (03:08)
9. Next in Line (04:15)
10. All for Nothing (06:37)
Full runtime: 41:44

With Nowhere Speaks, EMPTINESS descends into a dimension stripped of all human trace, a place governed by its own silent logic, where unfamiliar forces and energies move with intent that has nothing to do with the listener. The album does not narrate; it confronts. Its opening track, “Nothing But The Whole (Part 2)”, begins mid-riff, picking up exactly where Nothing But The Whole (2014) cut off, the abrupt ending that baffled fans for years and became one of the more discussed gestures in underground metal. The closing track of Nowhere Speaks then returns to the opening riff of that same 2014 record, completing a deliberate loop between the two albums, beginning and ending inside each other. It is the band’s central idea made structural: nothing and everything at the same time, a cycle with no fixed point. After the stark withdrawal of Vide (2021), distortion-free and sung in French, this is a return to density, weight and immersive intensity, recorded live in the studio after four years of preparation, and entirely unconcerned with making its listener comfortable.

Founded in Brussels, Belgium in 1998, EMPTINESS set out with a clear and uncompromising intention: to explore darkness not as aesthetic but as territory. Drawing from black and death metal as departure points rather than destinations, the band approached extreme music with an experimental orientation from the start, shaping a sound that resisted easy classification. Early demos established a presence in the underground, their reception confirming that something distinct was forming in the Belgian capital.

The debut full-length Guilty to Exist (2004) laid the foundation, establishing the band’s identity without yet fully realizing its potential. Oblivion (2007) was where that potential first arrived completely: a record of exceptional production depth, commanding guitar work and a heaviness of atmosphere that made it, in retrospect, one of the defining metal releases of that year.

Error (2012), released through Dark Descent Records, pushed further into dissolution and atmosphere, sacrificing structural clarity in favour of immersion. Menacing, dissonant and unrelenting, it cleared space for what came next.

Nothing But The Whole (2014) was the album that opened EMPTINESS to a broader critical audience and remains their most discussed and celebrated statement from that first phase. Strange, hypnotic and formally resistant to genre convention, it held the raw force of extreme metal while stripping back its mechanics, allowing texture, dread and silence to carry weight where blast beats and tremolo picking had previously stood. Its closing moment, a riff severed mid-phrase as though the record had simply ceased to exist, drew years of speculation from listeners. It was not an error. It was a promise deferred.

Not For Music (2017), the band’s first release through Season of Mist, represented a categorical departure. Moving away from extreme metal frameworks entirely, the album drew on goth rock, coldwave, industrial and post-punk, pursuing a palette of dark music that felt fully inhabited rather than borrowed. Recorded at the band’s own Blackout Studio in Brussels, its final form was shaped with the involvement of Jeordie White (MARILYN MANSON, A PERFECT CIRCLE, NINE INCH NAILS), with mixing and mastering by Sean Beavan (GUNS N’ ROSES, NIN, SLAYER). The resulting record reached audiences well beyond the metal world, confirming EMPTINESS as a serious proposition across multiple scenes.

Vide (2021) took the band’s trajectory to its most formally radical point. Recorded in isolation, across apartments, a cabin in the woods and a Brussels rooftop, sung entirely in French and stripped of all distortion, it was a claustrophobic document of confinement and perceptual dislocation. The surrounding global context only reinforced the collapse between the inner world being constructed and the one outside. EMPTINESS performed the album in its entirety at Roadburn Redux 2021, a pairing that confirmed their standing within the avant-garde and experimental underground as precisely as any review could.

From early in their career, EMPTINESS has worked this way: Jérémie Bézier handling production across all its dimensions, Olivier J.L.W. directing the visual work in its entirety. Sound and image conceived, shaped and finalized from within. Nowhere Speaks continues that closed circuit, as it always has been.

Nowhere Speaks is not a return. After the most introverted and isolated record of their career, the band opens outward into density and live intensity. The album, developed over an extended period of time, was composed by Jérémie Bézier and Olivier J.L.W., who oversee its production across both sonic and visual dimensions, bringing the work to completion as a unified whole, committed to tape live in the studio. The structural conceit of opening mid-riff from where Nothing But The Whole ended, and closing with that album’s opening riff, is not nostalgia. It is the same logic that has always governed EMPTINESS: the cycle without a fixed point, beginning and ending inside each other, nothing and everything at the same time. The band has spent years demonstrating that they do not move in straight lines. Nowhere Speaks is a continuation from a point the listener was not meant to forget.

Line-up:
Jérémie Bezier — Vocals, Bass
Olivier J.L.W. — Guitars
Simon L. — Guitars
Dea Hydra — Synths
Laye Louhenapessy — Drums

Follow Emptiness:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Emptiness.be
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emptiness.official
Bandcamp: https://emptiness.bandcamp.com/
Twitter/X: https://x.com/Emptiness_band
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5AXPdt3zknCylvlnEi0JFO
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/artist/emptiness/303855225
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/artist/199828
Tidal: https://tidal.com/artist/4813509