PILLARS (FR) returns from the dead with their debut full-length entitled, “Onward to Nothingness” – the follow up to their 2017 EP, “Pyres and Gallows”. “Onwards to Nothingness” definitely shows the evolution of the band whose sound matured to a darker and heavier aesthetic. Fans of With the Dead, Bell Witch, Conan, and doom legends Moss, will certainly embrace this offering.
” This is not another record about witches, magic spells, Lovecraft, or space aliens; it’s about the harsh, ugly reality that life is a bitch… Of all the great records to emerge from France this year, Pillar’s Onward To Nothingness surely joins Cult of Occult’s Anti Life, as the year’s best. ”
– Doomed & Stoned
“Imagine a sudden, seismic shift in your reality. You find yourself alone on a vast, humid plain, shrouded in mist and littered with bones. Before you looms a giant monolith of granite, a gargantuan tombstone of broken hopes that blots the sun — and it’s disintegrating, with boulder-sized fragments cascading down in a slow-motion avalanche of black destruction. You want to run, but the earth has turned to tar beneath your feet, and begins to heave as the boulders strike like bombs. It’s an ugly, nightmarish dream from which you awaken in a cold sweat, haunted and shivering. It’s one way (my way) of imagining the visions created by the song you’re about to hear, the name of which is “Swarms From the Swamp”
– No Clean Singing
No doubt this is the sludgiest Doom album I’ve heard this year. If you would like a soundtrack to the approaching darkness that brings with it all the scary things it drags underfoot while it works towards consuming you, this album is what you want.
– Metal Temple
“French PILLARS serve spellbinding, stoically rolling, fuzzily buzzing occult doom metal on their new album – “Onward to Nothingness” “
– Doom Metal Front Zine
“Providing a twisted, fuzzed and bleak doom sound, Onward to Nothingness is a record that threatens to unclip the safety line that keeps the mind tethered. From the slow, crusty rhythm of The Fearsome Path to the tripped out melancholy of Vultures to the soul-scouring horror of Pale Horse Rider, the first half of the album is an eye-opening listen.
Talking about horror…that is the word that comes to mind as the title track rings out. A harsh wall of eerie and disconcerting noise, it barely holds it all together to make a coherent track but it gets under the skin!
The Mourner then settles things down a bit with a hefty slice of doom heaviness that keeps the Pillars style of fuzzy and dark guitar heaviness at the forefront before Swarms From the Swamp turns it down to a deep and sludgy level. The bass and drums reverberate around the darkness alongside the gruff vocals. An epic finish that hits the 10-minute mark, it’s the icing on a doom-laden cake.”
– Games, Brrraaains, and a Headbanging Life
“…expect icy glacial speeds and pulverizing power of a glacier …‘Onward To Nothingness’ is a really fine piece of work. It grates, it pulverizes, it destroys. It is what sludge should be like. Sparing nothing, totally reckless.”
– Lords Of Metal
Clément – Vocals
Djé – Guitars
Disaster – Bass
JJ – Drums
Recorded live in October 2017 at Studios de la Forge, Nancy, Fr
Mixed and Mastered by Pierre Schaffner
Songwritting by Disaster – Lyrics by Clément
Guest noise on “Onwards to Nothingness” by Emmanuel Zuccaro
Arrangements by PILLARS
Cover by Axel Zender