Void Of Vision

The immediate cause: Jack had suffered a seizure in the dead of night (nearly biting off his tongue in the process), fortunately awakening his household who promptly contacted emergency services. The more fundamental, tectonic-plates-of-life shifting reason was revealed after days of tests and a revolving door of specialists: Jack had a “glitch” in his head. An arteriovenous malformation (AVM), to be precise, a tangle of blood vessels in his brain, revealed by MRI and CT scans.

Cautiously discharged from medical care after 10 days with a prescription of seizure medication, and the advice to “avoid activities that raise blood pressure”, Jack did just about the last thing you’d expect: he shot an intense music video for DOMINATRIX, the lead single of VOV’s 2023’s ‘CHRONICLES II: HEAVEN’ E.P., just days after leaving his hospital bed, moved house, and proceeded to tour internationally across North America and Europe, before returning home for the recording of ‘CHRONICLES III: UNDERWORLD’.

“I didn’t want to stop,” admits Jack; “I underestimated the seriousness of the situation, and just carried on with the band schedule. It was a sort of denial, a dissociation from what I’d just been through.”

Though Void Of Vision ploughed ahead with all commitments, a creeping exhaustion forced Jack to take stock of what his body was telling him. He had to step back from doing everything, everywhere, all at once, and instead find a way to keep the band active and alive, without running himself into the dirt. Ever the artist and storyteller, Jack’s version of adaptation led to the genesis of a “second Jack”, a more private, disconnected persona to act as alibi for his being absent and less available on tour, for not slinging shirts at the merch table or meeting fans after shows, and almost entirely offline in terms of promotional activities for the band. This persona was dubbed the “Angel Of Darkness”, a shadow-self and creative gimmick that enabled the real Jack Bergin to take his foot off the gas, to take the space he so needed to get through each day on tour, whilst still propelling Void Of Vision’s artistic world forward. The ‘Angel…’ gimmick birthed a song and video, and initially formed the basis of plans for VOV’s next album: a conceptual, sci-fi inspired story of a human vessel quarantined and possessed by an ambiguous, ambivalent celestial being.

Alas, the steps taken were not enough: at 5 A.M, April 5^th, 2023, Jack awoke to a searing headache unlike anything he’d experienced before and checked himself into hospital. Scans revealed that the AVM had ruptured, and he was suffering a brain bleed. Surgery was now essential; immediately it was clear that Void Of Vision’s schedule, including headline shows, festivals and the recording of their next album, needed to be wiped clean, as Jack was hospitalised for the foreseeable.

“I was perpetually under the microscope,” recalls Jack of the weeks that followed, as he underwent endovascular coiling to reroute blood flow in his brain around his cerebral ‘passenger’ and was referred for a future course of stereotactic radiosurgery; “I was totally disoriented at times, coming round during conversations not recalling how they’d begun or what I was talking about. Even though the surgery I had was deemed non-invasive, the ordeal of it all and the displacement I felt was as invasive as it gets. I was being constantly monitored whilst my world was falling apart, and life was slipping further away from me. I remember a lot of confusion and a lot of anger.”

Experiencing what he today acknowledges was little short of an existential crisis, Jack spent the weeks in his hospital bed in a state of exhaustive, draining introspection, reflection and analysis, oscillating between contradictory emotions, facing his own mortality and questioning everything; “Was / is it all worth it? What am I doing with my life? Who am I without the band? What will I leave behind?”

This maddening limbo was only further enhanced by the dual-self Jack had created through Void Of Vision; both Jack, The Artist and Jack, The Human were in crisis, at loggerheads, the actions and thoughts of one often negatively impacting the other: “Trying to make music for a living is like a bloodsport, but one where even moments of triumph can feel hollow,” he reveals; “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.”

From this state of conflict, Jack’s internal war of attrition, came ‘What I’ll Leave Behind’, Void Of Vision’s fourth album.

With a loftier, metaphor shrouded concept no longer resonating as appropriate catharsis for what the frontman was – is – living through, the album became a raw, open heart and open vein journey into a ravaged psyche locked in vicious cycles, Jack eschewing the album’s initial fascia in favour of “total honesty”: “The album is a reflection, on and of everything; coming to terms with life and mortality,  finding inner peace from within the impact crater.”

‘What I’ll Leave Behind’ finds Bergin and his bandmates, James McKendrick (guitar/vocals), George Pfaender (drums) and Mitch Fairlie (guitar) more focussed than ever, the genre polyamory of the CHRONICLES era smelted and reforged into a sound that is distinctly, unmistakably, joyously their own. Nasty heavy, yet sleekly surgical, it offers the perfect soundtrack for a journey from disaster to acceptance, via trauma, uncertainty, loss and learning.

“I feel a lot better now about dealing with the future, about balancing my  health and art” says Jack, re-energised following a successful first round of gamma knife radiosurgery and a full US tour supporting ERRA; “I’m grateful to be alive”.

hide more