Voideater Sets Itself Apart From Other Denver Doom Bands

Voideater. The word itself is enough to conjure images of a Lovecraftian inter-dimensional monster that, like Cthulhu, secretly lurks somewhere within the ever-expanding universe, only to wreak havoc if provoked.

But it’s also a kick-ass band name, which is what vocalist and guitarist Neil Hernandez thought when he started the local cosmic doom outfit in 2015.

“Space is terrifying,” he says. “And I want people to feel the same way...and think about it more” when they listen to Voideater.

Drummer David Saylor, who joined the group six years ago, adds another perspective about the cold reality of space: “It’s expansive and infinite, but it’s also extremely claustrophobic.”

He cites Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and likens Voideater’s sound to being “trapped in a tiny box.”

“You’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s no gravity, no one can hear you scream," Saylor adds. "But we’re going to try."

Painting such a sonic picture requires several elements, including down-tuning the guitar and bass E0, which is virtually “subsonic,” says bassist Matt Rinehart.

“It’s extremely low,” he explains. "People are like, ‘Why do you do that? You can’t even hear that shit.’ I guarantee you can. It’s more of a feel than anything else.”

The band can attest to exactly what those sounds can do to the human body. “It happens in practice every once in a while, like, ‘Whoa, okay, I've got to stop for a second,’” Rinehart says.

“It gives you vertigo," Saylor adds. "It definitely can blur your vision.”

It’s safe to say that seeing Voideater live is a memorable experience, both physically and visually. The trio is heavy on the LED lights and lasers.

“Besides just the sound, the effects that we use, we light everything up, we have lasers, we have smoke machines that we bring to every show, no matter where we’re playing,” Rinehart says, pointing to the glowing stack of amps that are dispelling different colors in the band’s practice space. “We’ll do that shit at Bar Bar. We don’t care where we’re playing, we’re going to bring all that.”

Saylor calls it a “light show that’s not Pink Floyd.”

“I think people are blown away. I would hope so. Even if they don’t like the music, they love the show,” Hernandez adds.

“It adds another level to it, but I don’t really know how to prepare people for it," Rinehart says. "It’s just Voideater."

With a new album, Speak Into Existence, in its arsenal, Voideater is playing a record release show Friday, June 16, at HQ. Worry, Grief Ritual and Caltrops are also on the bill. Physical copies of Speak Into Existence will be available there, too.

Voideater isn’t your typical low-and-slow stoner band that’s content with letting one note drone on forever. The band likes to do doom a little differently, especially in a local scene that’s saturated with the more traditional, trippy sound.

“When you look at some bands in this world of doom bands, it’s like…boring,” Hernandez says with a laugh.

That’s why they call what they’re doing with Voideater “blackened doomcore” — a new subgenre tag that includes death doom, sludge, hardcore and an old-school death-metal attitude. Rinehart, who considers himself “the new guy” in the band, recalls seeing Voideater live before officially joining, and how he didn’t get much of a “doom” vibe from it. Once he came in as the group’s bassist, he suggested thinking of something that would help the trio stand out a little more.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of different doom bands in Denver and in the genre in general. When I heard that Voideater was referring to themselves as a doom band, I didn’t really see it. There’s definitely doom aspects of it, but we’re not a stoner doom band or traditional doom band," he explains. "I’d say more of the music is death-doom, but the vocals have more of a hardcore feel to them. I talked to Neil about this and said, ‘I think we should try to differentiate ourselves from typical doom.’ We went back and forth for a while on text. That’s where we kind of landed.”

Hernandez, who previously played in death-metal and metalcore bands, just “wanted to do something different.”

“It comes down again to that I don’t want to be labeled in one category, like, here’s Sleep and Sunn O))),” he says. "I wanted to take it back to old Slayer and Crowbar style. Those elements are just heavy. I just wanted it to be heavy. I hope that’s what people grab from it.”

The six songs on Speak Into Existence build to the nearly ten-minute epic “I Am the Astronaut,” which is about as spacey as it gets, but is then followed up by the more uptempo “Black Nebula" — a three-minute slugfest. The thirteen-minute stretch, which accounts for nearly half of the album, is a master class in what Voideater does best. Like a black hole, the bandmates hope listeners will be unwillingly entranced and sucked into what they do, too.

“I’ve always been bored by regular doom. It’s all slow. I can’t stand on my feet for that long to listen to it. It only gets so epic and so loud, and I’ve been doing that for years." Saylor says. "If I’m not physically exhausted, then I don’t want to do it. … You can’t fake that, because it’s not for other people, it’s for us. If other people like it, that’s cool, and we want them to like it, but we do it for us. If it’s just slow the whole time, nobody wants that. We add in more.”

Voideater, 8 p.m. Friday, June 16, HQ, 60 South Broadway. Tickets are $10.