Nosk of the Void is the black metal project of illustrator Chuck BB, who's worked on Spider-Man, Fear Agent, Oni Press' Black Metal, Decibel Magazine's Stone Cold Lazy comic strip, and more. He may be best known as a visual artist, but as he recently proved on his self-titled debut album as Nosk of the Void, he's a genuinely great musician too. The album finds Chuck delivering melodic, atmospheric black metal with a post-punk edge, and he has a firm grip on both genres. His coarse screams sound truly evil, but the rhythm section sounds like it could've been an '80s 4AD band. If you're into the upbeat black metal that bands like Alcest and Tribulation have churned out, you should give this a spin too. We're premiering the video for opening track "Rest Eternal," and here's what Chuck says about the album and this song/video in particular:

Nosk of the Void is a tribute to the cult video game Hollow Knight, while also being a very personal exorcism of the fear we all feel about failure and ultimately death. The song “Rest Eternal” in particular is about the duality between myself, the human player, and the avatar that I control within the game, the knight. The knight is merely a vessel that we as the players fill with ourselves and our own experiences. We are challenged, we are pushed, and we see the ultimate beauty. The knight experiences none of that without me. So we are bound together, day and night as one. And while I can only die once in reality, within the game I am the knight, and I can die a thousand times. We could not be more different, and yet one can’t exist without the other. It is only when these two sides converge that we can fully experience true freedom.

The video ties into the themes of the lyrics, specifically the coded message that this has to do with video games. I’ve always found the arcade cabinet to have a bit of magic to it, these giant monolithic wooden beasts blasting you with a video and audio assault. It was important to communicate the video-gameness of the song, while maintaining that lofi black metal vibe. So we hand built a little model of an arcade cabinet, pumped in the smoke and lighting effects - and with that created an atmosphere that falls in line with the atmosphere of the music. The idea behind it was to almost have the feel of those old pre-mtv music videos where it would be just a singer spotlighted with whatever practical effects you could add. In this case, it is a single arcade cabinet delivering the vocals, viewed from many angles and levels of visibility.