The Void Alone

The Void Alone is Maryland native and post-metal project Crawl Across the Sky (Nathan Kwon)’s newest effort and concept album, after two years of constant work. Written during his time in the Chicagoland area for undergrad, studying psychology with an art minor, as well as during a transition back to his home state, The Void Alone boasts an hour and forty-four minutes length, drawing from the eclectic direction in genre initially started with The Silent God to create an aural experience that is intended to immerse the listener into its small conceptual microcosm. This sizeable amount of material is also accompanied by a story, detailing the thoughts and ruminations of the last human, escaping from worldwide nuclear war and climate devastation into outer space. The narrative touches on themes last seen on The Silent God, such as the nature of suffering and faith, but also attempts to explicitly and implicitly touch on new ones, like feminism, sexism, the relationship between character and author, political and religious corruption, the nature of God, and mental illness, but articulates them in a stream of consciousness format through the main character. It touches and draws from philosophical and literary giants such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, T. S. Eliot, Marilynne Robinson, and Sartre, to bolster its philosophical nature.

The Void Alone is a departure from more traditional post-rock and post-metal influences, like This Will Destroy You and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and into black, death, doom, and sludge territory while also leaning into the neo-classical, drone, electronic, and spoken word aspects that were only lightly touched by The Silent God. The new album features the talents of Grace Yoo and Disqo Volante (Matthew Booth), and narration by ESAE (Christine Lee), which Nathan is immensely grateful and excited for. The Void Alone is an effort Nathan has strenuously put his heart and life into, and is (he hopes) a raw and vulnerable attempt to articulate what it means to be a person of faith and also be a human that lives in a broken and suffering world.