Since their formation in 2019, the ascent of Canada's GUTVOID has been nothing if not meteoric. From their initially digital-only debut EP, Astral Bestiary to the Four Dimensions of Auditory Terror four-way split shared with BLOOD SPORE, COAGULATE, and SOUL DEVOURMENT the following year GUTVOID churned forth a world-eating Metal of Death that duly devoured the listener whole. Still, massive potential lurked, and it arrived with one of the most fully-formed death metal debut albums in 2022's Durance of Lightless Horizons. Taken individually, each of GUTVOID's recordings builds upon the last but offers surprising twists of the knife. And so it goes with the band's brand-new mini-album Breathing Obelisk. Totaling 31 minutes across four tracks, one can easily do the math and surmise that GUTVOID here are stretching out into epic territory. Fittingly, they open up their world-eating sound to include looser execution, more fist-pumping mid-tempos, hypnotic repetition of melody, linear-but-not-really songwriting, and a strange style of grooviness...or "grooviness" in that it's akimbo and angular and yet still supremely rhythmic in a manner most surprising for tried-and-true death metal. Here, the band eschew much of the doominess of their preceding work and instead allow those vast vistas of space pregnant with tension & terror to be built back up with rolling tank-treads of mountainous might. Cementing their status as one of the best still-young death metal entities around, GUTVOID challenge you to stand before their Breathing Obelisk.