Sightless Pit
Lockstep Bloodwar
THRILL JOCKEY
Sightless Pit feels like the logical next step for the pocket of experimental metal that includes bands like The Body, Full of Hell, Thou, and Uniform who’ve been taking turns making full-length albums with each other for something like a decade now. With those records tending to distill the best and most familiar elements of both factions in every release, Sightless Pit reworked that 50/50 formula with their 2020 debut LP Grave of a Dog, stripping Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker and The Body’s Lee Buford from their bandmates while rounding out the intense sound-design outfit with High Priestess Of Having A Bad Time At Church Lingua Ignota. It felt like the trio was pushing their cumulative sound as far as it could go in as many directions as they could while continuing to unwaveringly adhere to the record’s sole core principle: evoking pure, pit-of-your-stomach dread.
But if Grave of a Dog established the project as nebulous in sound, Lockstep Bloodwar, their sophomore release, further establishes the project’s lineup as nebulous. With Lingua Ignota’s Kristin Hayter unable to partake in the rituals this time around, her salary cap space was evidently freed up to ink deals with a fairly diverse list of guest artists, each of whom feel at home in these densely murky waters: the tired coos of Midwife, the droning, glitched-out vocals of Claire Rousay, the horrorcore flow of the late-great Gangsta Boo. Where Grave at times literally sounded like an impending doom pounding down the door (it was released in the weeks leading up to COVID, go figure), Lockstep oddly reflects the subtler shades of terror present in living beyond that apocalypse.
Which makes Lockstep a bit of an underwhelming listen, if unfiltered dread is what you signed up for. There’s clearly much more focus on ambient textures this time around—a realm both core members have proven adept in—with a more uniform industrial pulsing (speaking of, Michael Berdan also has a credit on the LP) making room for each contributor’s moment in the spotlight. The clear standouts here seem to be the verses from Gangsta Boo and Crownovhornz—the former briefly commandeering “Calcified Glass” after cutting in with a chilling laugh, the latter providing catharsis to “Shiv,” which otherwise shares DNA with Grave’s “Immersion Disposal.” Similarly, the ominous chanting and creeping feedback of “Low Orbit”—a spiritual sequel to Grave’s “Ocean of Mercy”—builds up a uniquely gnarly sonic bed for Gravediggaz’s Frukwan to rap over. If they can subdue the new wave of horrorcore emcees long enough to get sedated verses out of them, Buford and Walker may have new careers on their hands.
None of this is to say that Lockstep is a pleasant listen—the minimized instrumentals often give way to sounds nearly as unsettling as those heard on Grave of a Dog, such as Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s Lane Shi Otayonii’s screeching intro to “Flower to Tomb.” But it’s probably a good sign for the trajectory of humanity that Walker and Buford were either incapable of or uninspired to recreate the depths of horror achieved on “Miles of Chain.”
