Review: Voidchaser – Trust

Style: Progressive metal (mixed vocals)
FFO: Caligula’s Horse, Between the Buried and Me, Haken
Country: Canada/Sweden
Release date: 7 March 2025

You know the saying: it takes a village to raise a twenty-minute progressive metal Extended Play. Wait… that’s not the saying? Montreal/Stockholm-based Voidchaser could have fooled me with their latest release, Trust, which sees the band joined by a host of featured artists from near and far in a three-track extravaganza.

With so many contributors on Trust—at least one musician for each minute of music on the EP—it’s no small feat for Voidchaser to speak clearly with their own voice, since they have released but a scant few hours of music. Nonetheless, the band does stay true to the sound they pioneered on their 2024 debut album, Solace. In particular, there is a prevailingly upbeat, driving energy to Voidchaser’s sound. Even in the slower and more understated moments, the mood is never languid or melancholic. Of course, the recipe book for Trust contains pages from each of the featured artists: fellow Canadians Universe Effects¹ and The Anchoret, as well as Caligula’s Horse’s Jim Grey. Voidchaser also sprinkles and dashes in influences from greats like Between the Buried and Me, Haken, and Dream Theater, in quantities light enough to avoid sounding derivative.

The lengthy personnel list sometimes makes it hard to form a panoptic assessment of the musical performances of each contributor. I’m not sure who deserves credit for the zingy, vivid keyboard moments throughout “Time”, including the solo at 5:30. Regardless, the keys form a solid building block in the sound that Voidchaser is cultivating, evocative of BtBaM and even Seventh Wonder at times. On the other hand, this division of musical labour does allow the band to play to their strengths. I noted on Voidchaser’s releases from last year that vocalist Chad Bernatchez is more at home growling than singing; here, he leaves the majority of clean vocal duties to guests. The best of these vocal performances comes from Jim Grey in the breathless, pounding closing track “Trust”. Though he’s relegated to the final two minutes of the EP, his unmistakable vocal stylings compliment the incisive growls from the first half of the song; these take a backseat when Grey enters the fray. Together, they drive the track, and the EP as whole, across the finish line with exuberant energy that distills the best of what Trust has on offer.

The EP is billed as an “epilogue” to 2024’s Solace, picking up on the previous album’s plot: our protagonist is drifting through space with depleting oxygen tanks, reflecting on his life… and my eyes are already glazing over. Overwrought sci-fi concepts are a dime a dozen in progressive metal, and it takes a lot more than floating around in space to get me going. Fortunately, on Trust, Voidchaser don’t lean too hard on trope-y lyrics or spoken word. Outside of a moment near the end of the first track, there’s no overt talk of spacesuits or interstellar navigation. Instead, the band explores broader emotional themes that can be interpolated into the galactic setting without being too on-the-nose for listeners who prefer to let the music speak for itself.

Trust packs a lot into its short runtime: while I would rather see a band fit an hour’s worth of ideas into twenty minutes than the other way around, the EP is sometimes lacking space to breathe, notably on middle track “Dogma”. The pumping, rhythmic interplay of harsh vocals and keyboard at 1:40 is inspired, but squeezing oud², bansuri³, and saxophone features—plus a guitar solo—into the back half of the song diminishes the impact of each of those respectively stellar performances. It’s curious that Voidchaser have opted for such short releases here at the start of their career; even Solace clocked in at a svelte twenty-nine minutes. The approach of longer tracks on shorter releases, with a slew of different elements slotted into each song, comes at the expense of the immersion and time to unfurl afforded by a longer album.

I’d like to see Voidchaser walk a few more miles (or kilometres) in their own shoes before filling up their boot tray with a roster of other contributors. But despite their occasionally harried songwriting, the creative passion and musicianship fuelling this young band will propel them a long way—whether through the vast reaches of space, or just back to the recording studio to further refine their recipe and cook us up another album.

Recommended tracks: If you’re only going to check out one, “Trust”

You may also like: The Anchoret, Universe Effects, Ashbreather

Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Voidchaser is:
– Chad Bernatchez: Vocals, rhythm guitar
– Jici LG: Bass
– Jimmy Montbriand: Lead guitar
– Colin MacAndrew: Drums

1. With whom I was not previously familiar; they are fantastic and remind me of a heavier Reign of Kindo ↩︎
2. A Middle Eastern relative of the lute ↩︎
3. A bamboo flute of South Asian origin ↩︎