Review: Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of the Void

Artwork by: Giannis Nakos

Style: Death Doom Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Gothic Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Novembers Doom, Be’Lakor, In Mourning, Draconian, Katatonia, (new) Dark Tranquility
Country: Germany
Release date: 5 September 2025

Before there was the Aughts-old question of “pirates or ninjas?”, there was the classic: “Vampires or werewolves?” Being the proper Goth kid I was (and still am at heart, even as it lies buried under this decomposing shell of metalhead modernity), I always voted on the side of vampires. Agelessness, immortality, supernatural powers, skulking around in a castle nestled in the Carpathians, sipping Baja Blast from a skull chalice while nursing an eternally wounded heart… That beats “dog, but upright” to me every day. And so, whenever I think of Gothic metal and the veins of sorrow, morosity, and dark romanticism filigreeing its obsidian surfaces, my mind appropriately turns toward these moribund masters of the Night. Bands like Draconian, early Lacuna Coil, and Katatonia tapped into this source, transporting me from suburbia to Stokerian fields of longing, regret, and love with glimmering, mournful guitars and often doleful, rich atmospherics.

Admittedly, I haven’t kept up with Gothic metal as a genre aside from a few entrenched favorites, but my penchant for moody sadboi (or gurl, for that matter) music has hardly been trampled by the lock-step of time. I may have traded Tripp pants for Dockers, Draconian for Sleep Token, yet this soft, wistful heart beats unchanged, a torch stubbornly burning against baleful gusts. Arriving to help stoke this fire are Germany’s Nailed to Obscurity with their fifth LP, Generation of the Void. Pulling in the forward motion of melodic death metal and the rain-drenched drear of doom alongside Gothic metal’s velvet tones, Nailed to Obscurity have assembled three of the necessary pieces required for my resurrection. With time on their side—their debut Abyss emerged in 2007—these veterans of gloom should be skilled enough practitioners to pull me from ignorance. Can they affix themselves in my mind? Or are they fated to languish in, well, obscurity?

Generation of the Void operates in similar sonic territory as a Draconian or modern Dark Tranquility, reaping fields of soulful harvests with scythes of angular riffage, while punchy double-bass and blast beats dig deep into the soil like an industrial hoe. Passages of strummed guitar, deliberate kitwork, and vocalist Raimund Ennenga’s searching cleans enforce feelings of introspection and taking stock after the day’s toil has concluded. Songs like “Overcast” convey this especially well: buzzing death metal guitars, thundering drums, and forceful growls bleed into the aural equivalent of aftermath; the work is done, and all that’s left is to stand on that lone gray hill and look out upon the fields, grateful yet sorrowful all the same, backlit by a winsome pyrrhic melody. Glossy slivers of modern Katatonia can be found in the more moribund structures along with the way Ennenga’s cleans lay across the misty beds of instrumentation (“Generation of the Void”), and in the ways the music clambers towards triumphant moments, like the short solo on “Spirit Corrosion,” or the melancholic riff that emerges from the chorus on “Overcast.”

Truthfully, there aren’t many things on Generation of the Void that don’t work. The songs are all fairly dynamic, built on organic shifts and mixtures of melodeath ferocity and jangling doom that keeps the listener engaged on even longer cuts like the aforementioned “Overcast” or the eight-plus-minute “Echo Attempt.” Nailed to Obscurity also, ahem, nailed down the perfect production for their sound—beefy in the heavier moments, yet spacious enough that every element of the band’s sound comes through clearly. Volker Dieken’s and Jan-Ole Lamberti’s guitars shine alongside Ennenga’s vocals, complimenting as opposed to conquering. On the foundational side, both drummer Jann Hillrichs and bassist Lutz Neemann provide great rhythm and texture, respectively. Of the entire cohort, Neemann is—somewhat predictably—the most buried in the mix, but he is far from obscured, pushing through the tracklist like the thrum of blood in the veins. Despite a fifty-six minute runtime, Generation of the Void avoids feeling drawn out or overdone thanks to good pacing and a solid mix-up of heavier, more urgent tracks against the slower moodier cuts. Take “Echo Attempt,” which flows from melancholic Gothic metal to an almost metalcore-indebted “breakdown” towards its middle section that translates smoothly into a bridge of echoing, plaintive guitar and Ennenga’s hypnotic cleans before jumping into some forward-moving melodeath.

For those of you who like to skip ahead and read the score first (it’s okay, I do it too, sometimes), you may be thinking: “Why isn’t this higher?” A great question, metaphorical chum. The answer is simple: the album lacks the kind of stuck-in-the-brain qualities, that indescribable x-factor, to kick it up to the next level. While listening, I’m hooked to the riffs, the choruses, the vibe of the whole thing, but once I step away everything fades away. And that’s okay. Most of the music we enjoy exists in that space, when you stop and think about it. Generation of the Void may not be nailed to my consciousness the way albums like Youthanasia or Take Me Back to Eden are, but that doesn’t mean it’s lost to obscurity, either. Generation of the Void is a well-written, well-executed slab of death-doom, and a great way to serenade summer’s last gasp and herald the creatures of the night. Nailed to Obscurity they may be, but thankfully in name only.

Recommended tracks: Overcast, Echo Attempt, Allure, Generation of the Void, Clouded Frame
You may also like: Hanging Garden, October Tide, Ocean of Grief, Shores of Null, Shores of Ithaka, Daylight Dies
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Nuclear Blast – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Nailed to Obscurity is:
– Volker Dieken (guitars)
– Jan-Ole Lamberti (guitars)
– Jann Hillrichs (drums)
– Raimund Ennenga (vocals)
– Lutz Neemann (bass)