DEAD AS DREAMS

Extreme metal is a genre that I enjoy immensely, and, upon hearing that this is considered to be one of the first albums to merge post-metal with black/death-metal I knew I had to give it a listen, having very much enjoyed other bands that fused those two styles, such as Alcest.

Wow, that was quite a run-on sentence. My apologies.

To the music: I admit, when I saw the track listing I was a bit intimidated. Five songs, all of which are over ten minutes. I saw a lot of potential to get bored. Luckily, that was not the case. This music is, dare I say, soothing. That seems odd to say, given that the majority of the music is dominated by aggressive guitars and extremely harsh vocals, but in my opinion there's not a better word to describe it. The harshness and aggression coalesce into a soundscape which is very atmospheric despite its intensity. These songs are fairly repetitive, but in my opinion that helps them; it allows the listener to get into a rhythm and be able to zone out to this music, in contrast to other extreme metal bands that shred a lot and require all of your concentration to keep up.

However, I also don't want to give the impression that this music is just the same thing over and over. It's not as dynamic as say, Opeth's longer compositions are, but this music still rises and falls in the way you would expect from long tracks. There are soft acoustic passages (though they are brief and few) and long passages are instrumental in contrast to the harsh vocals.

Overall, I would recommend this album highly, but understand what you're getting into. This is labeled as Experimental/Post-metal, but Black Metal is still the primary influence here. This is an atmospheric and well composed album, but it uses very harsh instrumentation and style. I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but hopefully you get the idea. Good stuff.

4/5