Metal

Transcending Obscurity Records · 2 October 2026

The nine tracks are called “First Transmission”, “Second Transmission” and so on to the ninth. The fifth (3:55) has not one guitar on it: drums, sawing synths and a voice processed until nothing human is left in it. It sits at the exact middle of the record, and it is the piece where black metal is reduced to an intention.

Endspace are two Canadian musicians who introduce themselves as two strings of twelve digits, 040118180514 and 102119200914, the same ones they use in Fractal Generator, their death metal band. They say they spent thirteen years playing and writing together before setting up this second project, with synthesisers and vocoders at the centre of everything.

“Second Transmission” (4:28) runs a technical guitar line under a cybernetic voice, with a high, operatic wail cutting across it. “Sixth Transmission” (4:51) opens on a riff with an exotic tone that has been circulating since January, when it led the label’s annual sampler. “Eighth Transmission” (4:43) works over a lo-fi synth tone before the guitars pile in on top of it.

Thirty-nine minutes, nine tracks, and not one of them outside a 3:24 to 4:51 band. That evenness of running times, on top of titles that give you nothing to hold, leaves the album without landmarks: the label promises each transmission has its own identity, and on a second listen it is hard to remember which one held what. The material is there; the ordering isn’t.

It is the first record the two of them have released under this name.

Rating: 7.8/10

Text by Roger Estivill