In September 2011, grindcore band Call of the Void, then known as Ironhorse, played a show at the Sundown Saloon in their hometown of Boulder, Col., along with Denver's Speedwolf. To the University of Colorado students present at the bar to down cheap Old Style and play pool on their Californian parents' dime, they were a noisy interruption, a sideshow sanctioned by the bar yet seemingly uninvited by its patrons. Boulder in general is hostile to anything with distorted guitars at loud volume. If it's not influenced by Phish, Fleetwood Mac, or Skrillex, Boulderites don't want to hear it. Metal bands face such indifference all the time, but Call of the Void didn't get discouraged. They picked up a new vocalist, Steve Vanica, most of the band moved to much more metal-fertile Denver, and they signed to Relapse, also the impetus for the name change. Dragged Down a Dead End Path, their debut for the label, charges through apathy.
Like their peers in Early Graves and the now-deceased Gaza, Call of the Void traffic in a hybrid of hardcore, death metal, and crust. There's a definite Converge vibe, if Converge still had their learned fury but were less knotty in their arrangements. Comparisons to His Hero Is Gone fly in discussing the band, but they're not so much interested in melody as they are with laying waste. “Faith and Filth”, the closing track, sounds like an outtake from Napalm Death's From Enslavement to Obliteration. Low end is pronounced, almost to the point where it would be more appropriate to call them a fast sludge band rather than grindcore. This is especially true on the latter half of “Theory of Mind,” where around 0:53 the band unleashes a groovy break that resembles Tragedy listening to a lot of Pantera. A call-to-arms rave-up going into a chunky riff shouldn't meld, but Call of the Void's ability to fuse disparate extreme metal influences makes it succeed. The only real “sludgy” part of the album is the introductory dirge of “Faliure”, and from there the album is mostly about speed and venom. They invoke Bower Power in the main riff of “Endless Ritual Abuse,” but even then that song is too grindy to be sludge.
Call of the Void have that certain strand of rage only Denver bands seem to possess. While they don't sound like their peers in Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire, Primitive Man, Speedwolf, or Catheter-- and those bands sound nothing like each other-- all these groups push their amps harder and play nastier seemingly to make up for Colorado's reputation as a laid-back, ski trips and bong rips state. Mellowness only serves to make them more enraged, more willing to say fuck all to limits. Call of the Void are no exception, and they're proving that Denver is a hotbed of serious vitrol and passion.
