Alien Queen Archives - The Obelisk

Void Commander Premiere New Single “The Night Took My Name”

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on January 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Starting last May, Swedish jam-prone classic heavy rockers Void Commander began to trickle out singles ahead of their fourth full-length and first for Majestic Mountain Records. Marking their 10th anniversary in 2024, the three-piece will issue their yet-untitled next LP in the months to come through Majestic Mountain and Interstellar Smoke Records, and “The Night Took My Name” follows behind “Dyke Blues” and “Bloodred Knight Alright” in representing the band’s covers-all-bases sound, bringing a doomier roll to the beginning and an open-feeling swing later, broad but still rhythmically centered, and with plenty of room for a jam as it pushes toward six minutes.

The record is like that. The harmonica-laced blues of “Sweet Depression” and “Alien Queen,” the latter of which brings together Sabbath‘s “War Pigs” and “The Wizard” and complements with a massive slowdown at the finish, and the ultra-flowing “Jam in C,” which hypnotizes in such a way as to make “The Night Took My Name” feel all the more like an outward launch. They lean into grittier rock at what I’ll neither confirm nor deny is the outset with “To the Grave” — one is reminded of the bombast of a song like “Fucked Up” from 2021’s River Lord (discussed here) — but run a gamut across heavy subgenres, tipping into hugely fuzzed lumber from the Sleepy intro to “Bloodred Knight Alright” in such a way as to tie together the improv-minded with the structures of the pieces that (more often than not, at least going by the tracklisting) are evolved from the root jams, shifting as it does into a bassy boogie strut near the finish that just kind of works because it does and the context allows for it; riffs pieced together creatively enough that as “Jam in C” meanders into a lyrical pattern, it feels like it’s happening if not in realtime then close enough to it that it doesn’t matter if it isn’t.

In terms of vibe, Void Commander make striking a difficult balance sound easy, and their sound on the whole reminds of some of the older-school Northern European troupes of the turn of the century, and no, I’m not just talking about Dozer, but bands like older Mustasch or Abramis Brama, maybe even Dead Man at least in terms of range, who brought together sounds from the ’70s and ’90s and helped shape heavy rock as we know it. That work has already been done, of course, but Void Commander are playing in that sandbox of decades of heavy rock influences, and whether it’s “The Night Took My Name” with a push that would be more straightforward from a lot of bands than it is here — and that’s a compliment — to the catchy stops of “Alien Wizard” (who presumably serves at the behest of the “Alien Queen”), Void Commander present a cohesive and individualized take on heavy tenets with a punker’s lack of pretense and an underlying groove that is welcoming even at its most dug-in.

I don’t have a release date for the album, and I don’t know if this will be the last advance track released as a standalone single from it, but it exists somewhere and between “Bloodred Knight Alright,” “Dyke Blues” and now “The Night Took My Name,” you’ve got three of the seven or eight tracks that will end up on the finished product, and that’s pretty good to go on. The other two, as well as the aforementioned River Lord, stream below, because MAXIMALISM.

Have fun, because you just might:

Void Commander, “The Night Took My Name” visualizer premiere

Vinyl will be a co-release with Majestic Mountain Records & Interstellar Smoke Records.

“- Another handful of stoner metal from the southern forests of the cold north arrives in the form of “The night took my name ”. A story of endless wake and sleep, a thin line between sleeping and being dead, The night took my name.” – Lee Noose, Void Commander

Void Commander was formed in 2014 by Bobbie (Vocals, Guitar) and Jimmy (Drums). After a long search and using many bass players, Linus (Bass) joined the band in 2016.