Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground extreme metal. Whether it’s death, black, doom, sludge, grind, thrash, -core, heavy, speed, punk-, stoner, etc., we bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen we bring you the world premiere of Void Tendril. 
Void Tendril are a duo from the UK and Ensnaring the Demiurge is their four song, thirty-three minute debut. Before it was even finished, this demo, in a sense, found us. Although neither Perran, Void Tendril’s vocalist and drummer, nor Josh, “all other instruments,” solicited their demo to us.
It happened like this: Piqued by their evocative name, we reached out to Void Tendril. That was nearly a month ago, Ensnaring the Demiurge was still being mastered. Knowing nothing about the band except that they had a cool name and sick cover art, we offered them this very Demo:listen slot to premiere their demo, just as long as they let us hear it ASAP. Because somehow we knew that Ensnaring the Demiurge would crush and crush magnificently. As if Void Tendril’s invocation was so heavy it could drive an ominous atmosphere before it.
“‘Void tendril’ refers to a kind of arm reaching from the unknown,” says Perran. “That unknown is open to interpretation, whether it be death, a malevolent entity, or something beyond the realms of human comprehension . . . [T]he tendril from the void . . . seeks to drag you back into the dark. An apt metaphor for music of this kind.”
Perran goes on to discuss how Void Tendril was brought into existence.
“Neither of us are involved in any other bands or projects, and really aside from very amateur-ish things, this is a first project for the both of us. Void Tendril came together in a very organic and unforced way. Josh and I have been friends for a few years and have both felt in the past like we would have liked a creative outlet but not had the like-minded people around us in order to do so, and through realising that we had those shared interests and that shared creative spirit (the clincher came when we realised we both liked Mortician really), we sort of came to an unspoken agreement that if either of us were going to start doing anything, it would involve the other. When Josh started writing the initial material of what would become Void Tendril, it was obvious that I was going to be involved.”
As for the artwork, Perran says: “Our logo and the artwork for the demo were both done by Unknown Relic. He’s a tremendously talented guy who has done art for some of our favourite bands. The artwork shows an ancient tower that presumably has been standing there for centuries gradually being consumed from the ground up by these destructive, grasping tentacles. It links with the title depicting what is old being overrun and destroyed by something new.”
There was mention of a Thergothon influence, also, during our initial correspondence. This was before the songs off Ensnaring . . . were sent to Demo:listen HQ. While the Thergothon influence is noticeable, it’s far from overt or pandering.
“The sound of Void Tendril is very much a melting pot of a number of influences,” Perran admits. “The initial spark of inspiration for those first few riffs and ideas came very much from funeral [doom] bands like Mournful Congregation and Thergothon, but black, gothic and death metal have all fed into the end product, and with further differing influences [for] the vocal parts. None of it was done in a tokenistic or strained way though. At no point did we decide to throw something in for the sake of it just to be different. The ideas that came about in creating these songs were part of a natural flow of thought . . .”
“All in all these songs took shape over the course of around half a year,” Perran continues. “The two of us live in different parts of the country, so we weren’t able to get together and jam and allow things to come about that way. Instead it was a case of sending ideas back and forth and providing constructive criticism. Josh came down to my place for a couple of weeks to record, once we knew we had all of the songs worked out. Everything was recorded then at once. I did the vocals and lyrics and also recorded the drum parts though that’s not my main role within the band. Josh did all of the other instruments.”
Now that you’re properly initiated, we can finally unveil the demo. At long last, here is Ensnaring the Demiurge . . .
“For now, Ensnaring the Demiurge will be available just as digital download and for physical on cassette,” says Perran. “We feel that’s reasonable for a first demo. Future releases may have more though.”
Watch Rat King Records or Void Tendril’s Bandcamp for those tapes. In the mean time, see you in the void!
