Photo by Cian Marangos

Building on the stylishly savagery of their Chronicles-era which fruited a trifecta of EPs culminating in the 2023 title LP, Melbourne heavy provocateurs Void of Vision have unveiled their most personal presentation to date in the What I'll Leave Behind. 

Back in January of 2022, vocalist and band architect Jack Bergin suffered a significant stroke. MRI and CT scans would reveal Bergin endured an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - a tangle of blood vessels in his brain. Spending 10 days in the hospital, Bergin was discharged and medicated, urged by doctors to rest and steer clear of activities that would raise his blood pressure. 

Instead, Bergin went back to work, shooting the music video for "DOMINATRIX," which would launch the 2023 CHRONICLES II: HEAVEN EP release. Pressing forward to complete subsequent tours of Europe and North America, along with the completion of the EP trilogy with CHRONICLES III: UNDERWORLD, Bergin immersed himself in work, though privately finding his bandwidth dwindling. 

The tireless pace would prove costly. On April 5th, 2023, Bergin's AVM ruptured. Bergin would need to have surgery and while the advice of doctors initially was to slow down, Bergin's harrowing health ordeal would now force him to come to a grinding halt entirely. 

Spending weeks in recovery, Bergin could no longer evade himself and his eventual confrontation with his own mortality offered a new perspective. During those days confined to the white walls of a hospital room, Bergin experienced an existential reckoning. He explains, "Trying to make music for a living is like a bloodsport, but one where even moments of triumph can feel hollow," Bergin confides. "At times, I felt totally over it, fed up with giving literally everything for people to just not give a shit, at others I'd be mad at myself for indulging in a pity party. My feelings were a constant juxtaposition."

Out of his extended period of self-inventory and introspection, Bergin poured his new found sense of perspective into the ten-track presentation that is What I'll Leave Behind. Bergin explains of the project, "The album is a reflection, on and of everything; coming to terms with life and mortality, finding inner peace from within the impact crater."

In what has been a coming to terms kind of creative effort, What I'll Leave Behind finds Void Of Vision exploring with a new found sense of artistic freedom - the kind that can only come from potentially losing everything. Jack Bergin offered even more insight to what his ordeal was like and how his face to face with mortality ultimately gave him the endurance needed to navigate the bloodsport of the music business. 

Bergin shares how the Chronicles-era of Void of Vision laid the experimental groundwork for the band. He confides the sense of uncertainty that goes along with sharing the stage with your heroes. Bergin also explains how his harrowing health ordeal finally allowed him to better understand his end goal in wanting to leave a lasting mark above all else. 

What I'll Leave Behind is in fact, just that. 

While much of the discussion around the album has been about your harrowing health ordeal, this album feels especially pivotal. You seem to be coming to terms with separating creating music for artistic gratification versus making it a sustainable career. Is that accurate?

JACK BERGIN - Completely accurate. The honest hard truth for bands of our size/stature in the music industry right now is that it’s become increasingly difficult to make a sustainable career. Without that, I guess we really fold back and delve into the importance of creating art that really matters for not only the wider public but also for yourself.

The big question gets asked a lot whether it’s worth it a lot of the time and and I truly think that it was for birthing this record alone.

You have been very candid about the kind of criticism you were navigating prior to this album. However, it feels like the Chronicles-era really generated a much broader reach for the band. Was the trade off worth it?

It definitely generated a much broader reach for us, I always knew deep down the visuals would create a talking point and catch new eyes that never would’ve even have heard the band before. A lot of it also stemmed from my own personal issues surrounding body dysmorphia, losing all the hair on my body from the alopecia diagnosis. I think at that stage I was just trying to find ways to conceal that and distract from the fact with makeup/fashion and amidst that I feel as if I lost a part of myself.

However, stripping back all of that to reveal such an honest and raw body of work it feels quite refreshing after leaning so heavily on the theatrics for so long. As much as I feel the trade off may not have been worth it, in the long run, perhaps it was.
 

Does an album like What I’ll Leave Behind happen if not for your brush with death? Obviously confronting mortality would make anyone appreciate things so much more, but given the dissatisfaction you confided - how did that brush with finality change that?

No chance this album would exist without the experience that I went through. I think I finally understood the concept of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone’ and being able to see that in front of me for the first time raised a lot of larger questions for myself in all aspects of my life. 

There seems to be a very real sense of optimism on this record, despite the trauma that spawned it. Do you still feel like you are participating in a “bloodsport” in pursuing music professionally or have you found a different sense of gratification in it?

Absolutely feel the sense that ‘bloodsport’ still exists, but have been glad to remove myself from the type of mentality surrounding that. I’m enjoying creating art for myself for the first time in a long time and really bringing it back to my roots in the sense of discovering the magic within that again. It felt great to put it all in perspective and feel grateful to do what I do again and have a somewhat childlike innocence surrounding creating art, just letting everything happen all at once and tapping into every source of inspiration that I possibly can.

What kind of therapy did composing this record give you? The title, What I’ll Leave Behind suggests there is something especially cathartic about this release - more so than any previous VoV release. 

It gave me a lot of self reflection in order to take the correct steps to change how I live my life. I began a process of repairing and reinvigorating parts of my life I had left by the wayside and the joy of bringing old people and new people back into my life on that journey alone was so fulfilling.

It has been a crazy year of transformation and to think it all stemmed from the ‘therapy’ sessions on our producers couch to create this record, is insane to think of. This album will always serve as a point of my life where I chose to change and move forward for the better, and releasing it out into the world making that public is kind of a permanent stamp for me. 

2024 has proven a productive year for the band. Knotfest Australia, your North American run with Erra and now spot on the Parkway Drive 20th anniversary tour. Do you take these professional strides with a healthy skepticism?

Absolutely, honestly more often unhealthy than not. Brushes of imposter syndrome will always bounce around the walls of my mind - especially with this Parkway Drive Tour. It’s an insane thought to be playing in arenas with the band that was the reason you started your own band.

It’s really something I don’t think we’ll even truly be able to comprehend until the aftermath, things like this are so special that we really need to stop and smell the roses. If not then what the fuck are we doing?  

Stylistically, the band really seemed to indulge experimentation during the Chronicles cycle. In composing these songs, what were some of the lessons you learned from those EPs that carried over and was there anything you wanted to steer clear from?

Many lessons were learnt from the EP sessions. Experimenting with every sound that Void Of Vision was, is and could ever be was the most rewarding creative experience of our entire career. We honestly would not have been able to create What I’ll Leave Behind without going outside our comfort zone and sharing that with fans new and old.

We connected a lot of dots and I think finally being able to create an amalgamation of such a wide spread of influence across the board was such a triumph for us artistically. We wanted to steer clear of anything feeling shoehorned.

Every song needed to feel like it could be jumbled up in any order of the track listing and nothing was allowed to stick out like a sore thumb. We culled the most tracks we ever have on a record because of this. Just truly dialed in on what we had in the 10 favorite tracks and made them shine as much as we could. 

Every band says they make music for themselves but on this album especially, it feels as though this is the most personal record Void of Vision has released thus far. Is there any sense of freedom in being this candid on a record and have you come to terms with not being able to satisfy everyone? 

100% this is the most personal thing we’ve ever done. Selfishly for my sake it definitely is, wrapping up a lot of my individual experience but in a sense it truly has impacted the guys an equal amount. Realizing how much my life truly affects those around me is one of the many harsh realizations I came to writing this record, knowing that I have to live for myself but also for those around me.

I would imagine that success was likely defined much differently for you even just a couple of years ago. What is success for you now and how does What I’ll Leave Behind play into achieving that?

Success for me now is leaving a mark on this world. I’ve really struggled to figure out how to do so for a long time and realizing that we can all breeze through life so quickly without stopping to think about how we can try to do so is terrifying. We’re only here for such a limited amount of time and it’s so easy to get lost amongst the noise, if anything I’d hope this record shows that through that anyone can leave something behind and that we should all strive to do so whenever possible.