When you stop to think about weird intangibles like how many metal albums have been released in the history of the genre, or the number of bands, songs, labels and recording studios that have taken shape since metal's creation, the sheer magnitude of experience that has been invested in the genre is, if you truly conceptualize the idea, overwhelming. And when one realises that only the top one percent of albums actually stand out and make an impact, we're left with innumerable palettes that create nothing but indifference, which is... just the way things are, I guess. The reason this line of thinking is being brought up in the context of Chicago's BLACK SEPTEMBER is because the group's 2010 effort, The Forbidden Gates Beyond, was in that one percent, creating an impact that was wholly based on the band's impressive filtering of DISSECTION through the grime and grit of big city life, an amalgam that struck hard and decimated harder. The Forbidden Gates Beyond is a record that, two years later, is still highly recommended, but its specter casts a long shadow over Black September's latest foray into the black abysses that Jon Nodtveidt created and lived. Into The Darkness Into The Void is an impressively rawer affair than The Forbidden Gates Beyond was, but it lacks the shock-and-awe ability to make its way up and beyond its competitors in this weird underground we call home, and if you can't truly differentiate yourself than you are forever condemned to the sea of immeasurable indifference that is 99 percent of records. That said, Into The Darkness Into The Void is the proprietor of diamonds in the rough (literally), as 'Rabid Hunger' channels the despondent melodies that make the underrated THE FUNERAL PYRE so epic, while 'Beyond The Realms' and 'Unhallowed Ground' rank amongst the storied peaks in the mountains of blashyrkh Black September has so obviously expeditioned through. While this assessment of Into The Darkness Into To The Void makes it seem as if Black September has disappointed, it hasn't: this is still a necessary and intriguing band doing listenable and entirely approval-worthy things, and the group will stay on the radar as a result of Into The Darkness Into The Void's most potent hellfires. But let's just hope Black September's next record is the band's Storm Of The Light's Bane instead of its Reinkaos.
