DWELLERS OF THE DEEP

I remember several several months ago posting on the PA forums that Wobbler had begun the recording of their new album and one commenter say: "I'm scared, can they possibly make a worthy follow up?" While I had no doubt in my mind Wobbler was going to deliver a quality album, I had the exact same thought lurking in the back of my mind. From Silence To Somewhere is really just a completely earth shattering album to me. I ritualistically listened to that when I first discovered it and I have to agree with the sentiment that sillypuppy laid down in his review: FSTS is an album that just had the heavens touch, a once in a lifetime album. It's an album that makes me question all my other 5 star reviews and ratings and it's influence on me as a musician is nearly unparalleled.

I've always said, Wobbler has 4 albums and not a bad song between them. That's still the case, but now they have 5 albums. Dwellers of the Deep is that 5th and on this album, more than ever do I feel a sense of confidence and identity. My preorder came a couple days early and it just hasn't left my turntable since I got it. I find the songs here to be unbelievably dense and jam packed with layers upon layers. Within every single song I'm unpacking heaps of new stuff that flew over my head on previous listens and I'm finding this album to get better and better with familiarity. From a production and sonic standpoint, this album is gushing with life and punch, possibly their best in that department. Being familiar with their previous works, I find the drumming to really stand out on this album and I'm really seeing a very unique and distinguishable style molding on this release. The bass is very highly developed here, rather than simply playing to back up the drums on rhythm and set the stage for the more typical lead instruments to steer the show, the bass player is constantly laying down counter melodies on top of everything. Another thing I find more of on this release is a greater contrast between soft and loud. I'm a classical pianist, while I love me some Organ, Mellotron and Synth, nothing does it for me like some plain ol' acoustic piano, and boy is there plenty of that here! Oftentimes the music will strip down to just piano or just guitar before building right back up to full power. The lyrics are filled with beautiful imagery, but their greatest strength is how well they jive with the music. The guitar gets a little more time in the forefront with some great riffage and strong developed solos. I'm finding a lot more eclectic and atonal sounds/instrumentation in the mix on this one. We get 4 songs here and the structure is similar to that of FSTS, but backwards. However, the shorter song stands more as an actual song whereas Rendered in Shades of Green was a darker piece that to me, always felt like the breathing room needed after the behemoth title track.

By The Banks

Where do I even start on this one? So much to unpack. Right off the band starts throwing a wall of pure Wobbler at you with a windy and flowing organ on top of some real heavy riffage with the aid of some lower pitched harpsichord adding a nice punch. Around a minute in the organ takes the lead delivering some real nasty lines along with the drumming giving it a real headbanging feel. The lead vocals come in sounding straight from the heavens, larger than life. Throughout this track.... well... album, the vocal melodies and harmonies sound so dialed in and on point. After some awesome unison organ and guitar soloing, the song takes you on an earthy safari through pure Norwegian symphonic bliss. Around the 4:50 mark we fizzle down into a real epic sounding piano motif which builds up into a beautiful and inspiring sounding passage. At 6:48 they pull a clear Gentle-Giantism with the trading off of instrumental parts and the little nod always brings a smile to my face. It kicks into a sick striding groove and it does a little bit of an unexpected modulation in the vocals where it seems to come in and rise above where you would really expect the vocals to be at during this section, it's a great and well executed idea. However, while all this has been face melting, the section it develops into at 8:52 is unfathomably brilliant. This part of the song just gets me so amped up with its illustrious and celebratory feel led by pristine sounding Harpsichord and Synth while the guitars add that little extra elevating push underneath it. The flute is really the cherry on top, I live for this kind of stuff. Coming out of this it turns into a very haunting and mesmerizing movement with pretty sounds all around you as soft piano and intimate vocals sit in the forefront. It briefly turns pastoral before the intro comes back and slaps you across the face. This time it takes a little more of a darker and doomy feel before it takes off into the stratosphere at 13:18. God this part is so amazing, I really wish this lasted just a little longer cause it's glorious, even 2 more measures!! I'll take it! This is already one of my favorite Wobbler songs, hands down. Every single section and melody in this track is so memorable and it maintains such a high level of quality from start to finish. What a way to start an album!

Five Rooms

Five Rooms is consistently a very driving and upbeat song with fiery soloing and twisting interplay. The bass playing is extremely developed throughout this track. It opens with a very somber and hopeful organ and vocal soundscape before kicking into the high intensity action explicated by awesome guitar riffage and generally high energy playing from the whole band. While the windy guitar playing goes on, there's some really nice mellotron playing that gives the verse a nice flowing feel. The song turns sort of lowkey at around 1:59, but it doesn't lose any momentum, you can still feel that energy bubbling beneath the surface. I love this passage, the organ is doing the work of setting the mystifying stage here, but I also really love the intimate vocal delivery, lyrics and countless guitar counter melodies and subtleties throughout. It comes out of this passage in such a hard hitting and satisfying fashion with that organ gaining a few notches of heaviness while the guitar and rhythm section work together to deliver a couple extra layers of punch on top of it. Such a headbanger. Coming out of this we enter a big solo section kicking off with a really sweet guitar and organ solo and I think guitar player Marius Halleland really unleashes here with what I would call his best and most developed guitar solo to date. The mellotron comes in on top of a variation of the main riff and I love the real striding feel of the combo, the bonus organ layered on top takes it even higher. A really interesting "rise and fall" feeling vocal motif brings us out of this fierce solo section back into the verse. Seamlessly, a real fuzzy Canterbury-esque organ takes over and it's sweet! It sound's straight out of The Land and Grey and Pink, but with the distinguished playing style of Lars Fredrik Froislie. This is another case in the song where there's a lot going on in the rhythm section and if you listen carefully they're actually setting the stage for the next development of the song. I love the vocals that come on top of this doing a super swift job of delivering the goods on top of the shifting and unconventional time signatures going on beneath them. The song reaches a real epic peak and conclusion in the final couple minutes with soaring vocal harmonies, grand organ and guitar playing and an awesome victorious and celebratory feel to the music. Five Rooms packs so much content into eight and a half minutes and all of it sticks, another simply great song.

Naiad Dreams

This is the shortest track clocking in at just under 4:30, it's somewhat whimsical and pastoral. This track especially showcases the very largic sonic range on this album with it's very delicate instrumentation and atmosphere. In fact, there's more varied instrumentation throughout this track especially in the percussion department as well as some of the usual culprits. There's a really pretty passage towards the end with some picked acoustic guitar,electric guitar volume swells and mellotrons. A very pleasant song, and a very unique entry in their discography.

Merry Macabre

This is a track that's really taken me some time to wrap my head around, this song is so.... dense. Wobbler are no stranger to longform epics, but this one is different from anything they've done and honestly, anything I've heard from... anyone. This is a big one, taking up 19 minutes of the albums runtime and it packs a lot of content in those 19 minutes. The opening of this track is very menacing, there's airy piano playing while percussive subtleties swarm around before a really heavy and brooding organ riff takes the lead kicking the song into gear with the rest of the band promptly joining in. Throughout this opening verse there's tons of great instrumental variation going on, plenty of riffs, melodies and motifs to really sink your teeth into. Coming out of this for the first time it strips down to mainly just the rhythm section laying down the canvas for the lead guitar to lay down some awesome soloing/riffage while the organ underneath it throws in it's two cents. Coming out of this the dust settles for a bit as Wobbler brings you to the fountain of youth with only volume swelled electric and spacey vocal harmonies. I love the riff and playing that follows this section, reminds me a bit of my favorite band Camel, but I feel it's just a little abrupt. However the playful jazz groove it breaks into always brings a smile to this face and the vocal delivery on top of this creates a really interesting tone and feel. The band smoothly transitions this into a really awesome buildup and jam which is something generally new to their music. It starts small but not at the cost of its momentum, cause you can feel something stirring in the bassline, drumming, and very soft guitar and mellotron playing that are slowly building up in the soundscape. After some brief vocals, it takes things up a notch with the drumming picking up the pace and the guitar playing these awesome darker and windy riffs. The way it develops from here on out is just killer, the grooves and drumming in general throughout is just awesome and probably the best on the album while the instrumentation makes me feel as if the walls are melting around me, especially with the somewhat muted vocals that dip in and out. This jam reaches an awesome synth-laden conclusion before stripping back down to some soft, impressionist-esque piano playing and while I love nothing more than the sound of plain' ol acoustic piano, I can't help but feel that this short little passage is nonessential to the song. I think this passage acts as a bridge between the two best parts of the song, I think it feels a little touch-and-go and in turn we lose just a bit of steam. I really like the piano playing actually, but imagining both the aforementioned jam and upcoming conclusion of the song together in succession sounds amazing to me. However, coming out of this around the 16:15 mark these really mysterious sounding synths blossom around you on top of an already existing abundance of other ear candy sounds and instrumentation. When the whole band joins this closing section, it just becomes ungodly. In this big playout literally every single member's contributions sound so essential. It's super chaotic with this otherworldly synth lead in the forefront on top of some heavy eclectic guitar playing. Keeping the same energy, we get a little bit of a synth showcase with my favorite part starting at 17:40, there's such a nasty groove and the vocals sound so big and uplifting. It's a satisfying conclusion, but similarly to By The Banks, I wish they played this out for maybe a minute longer. This is undoubtedly an awesome song, there's some really great peaks here but I feel like there could've been a little more of an emphasis on the song structure as many of these great and beautifully creative sections come and go never to be heard from again. I find that the contrast between soft and heavy can be a little abrupt at times, but every section as a standalone piece of music is great. Overall, super solid track and one that is bound to have an endless amount of replay value.

This is one more fantastic entry by a band that is yet to really do much wrong. I rate this album as a strong 4.5 stars. For progarchives sake, I'm rounding down to 4 stars. This album is a very appropriate follow up to FSTS, they never sound like they're trying to cover that same ground, the songs on this album just give me a different vibe and that's the mark of a great artist. Certainly an album that is bound to make my 2020 podium, if not AOTY. Thanks for reading!

Share this WOBBLER review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to dougmcauliffe
• Report this review (#2462562)
• Buy WOBBLER music online with PA partners
• Show all WOBBLER MP3/Stream
• Go to WOBBLER page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Dwellers of the Deep page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for WOBBLER related discussions