One look at the striking, blood-soaked cover art for Vacuous’ second album ‘In His Blood’, and you know the London-based death metallers aren’t messing around. Examining ideas of violence and voyeurism, the album’s title was inspired by a disturbing image the band came across on social media.

“It was a picture of a man who had killed someone, just posing, standing in their blood,” says Vacuous’ frontman and lyricist Jo Chen. “It got me thinking about how we consume images of death: it’s become so normalised.”

“The internet is like a graveyard of people’s trauma,” adds guitarist Michael Brodsky. “Seeing all that does something to you as a person.”

Vacuous focus less on shock value, and more on emotional response. And while they definitely see themselves as death metal, they prioritise atmosphere over genre in their music. “We come from different musical backgrounds,” says Michael, “but we all like music that’s dark, raw and atmospheric; that has a bleak but honest feel to it.”

Michael and Jo formed Vacuous at the end of 2019. They started out as a trio but when the pandemic hit, they hunkered down to write and realised their ambitions demanded a bigger band. They’re now a five-piece, joined by Max Southall on drums, Ezra Harkin on guitars and Zak Mullard on bass. Their debut album, ‘Dreams of Dysphoria’, came out in 2022, but it’s with their new, second album ‘In His Blood’ that they’ve really hit their stride.

“We’ve talked about having different influences, and it felt like a bit of a dare to push things further [on ‘In His Blood’],” Michael says. “Back in death metal’s formative days, with bands like Autopsy, Obituary, Incantation, none of those bands sounded like each other: they were just pushing their collective influences together to the extreme. I think we’re still doing the same thing, just from the point of view of people who grew up in the 2000s.”

From the roaring, quick-fire intensity of the title track to the haunting atmospherics of ‘Hunger’ and the cinematic rumbles of ‘Contraband’, with ‘In His Blood’ Vacuous push the limits of what listeners might expect from death metal.

“We have some surprising influences on this album,” Michael says, explaining that the track ‘Hunger’ came out of imagining what it would sound like if The Cure made a death metal song. The spontaneity and attitude of punk and hardcore are also an influence, and Michael namechecks Converge – less for their sound, and more for their mindset and experimental nature. “They’re inspiring for how they meld different styles together, but it still falls loosely within hardcore metal,” he says.

The album was recorded at Holy Mountain Studios in Hackney with Stanley Gravett, who Jo and Michael agree was crucial to the finished product.

“This was the first time we’ve had any external help with arrangements which has been really good,” Michael says. “He was super invested in the record and helped us to unify everything. I’m really proud of how it sounds.”

Under the overarching idea of violence and voyeurism, in the album’s lyrics Jo explores a number of topics including horror films, serial killers, school shootings, toxic masculinity, and the Global North and South divide.

“The song ‘Contraband’ is about the 39 Vietnamese migrants who were suffocated in a lorry trying to come over to England,” Jo says. “It was such a tragedy, but it was blink and you miss it; news today and gone tomorrow.

“I was born in London but my family are from Malaysia, which is historically a poor country,” he continues. “There’s such a juxtaposition when I go back there. Here in the West, generally, people are often so comfortable. The only access that some people have to extreme poverty and violence is online.”

For the album’s eye-catching cover, the band wanted the viewer to feel as though they’d just stumbled upon a crime scene. It was shot in an abandoned building in the middle of a cemetery in London, by photographer Oscar Foster-Kane. “That was a fun day, it was very DIY!” says Jo. “We talked a lot about Antoine d'Agata, a French photographer who does this very cold, upsetting imagery.”

“In a way,” Michael adds, “it’s very death metal, because what’s more death metal than a dead body and a pool of blood? But we worked hard with the photographer to give it a kind of twist. We didn’t want someone who’s not into death metal to look at it and instantly write it off.”

Going forward, Vacuous want to keep pushing boundaries, being spontaneous, and taking risks. “We want to have a discography where every album is distinct,” Jo says. “We don’t want to feel like we’re repeating ourselves. You think of a band like Carcass, who do this and it’s super fun to listen to. We just want to keep trying something different.”