DREADNOUGHT: The Endless (DOOM,Post Metal): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Although originating from Colorado, Dreadnought reminds us a bit of the San Francisco scene of a decade ago, which, around bands such as Worm Ouroboros, Ludicra or Amber Asylum, shaped an ambitious music at the confluence of doom and progressive and atmospheric music. The powerfully emotional voice of guitarist Kelly Schilling is undoubtedly not foreign to this filiation, as well as the fact that Profound Lore Records hosts the band within a catalog that enriched in their time the formations mentioned above.

"The Endless" follows four offerings recorded since 2013 whose the quality did not fail to catch the attention of the ears sensitive to the female vocals (dis)tuned to a score as dramatic as daring. According to their habits, the Americans propose a chunky menu but less than usual. The compositions are always stretched, but their architecture is more compact, none of them exceeding ten minutes this time, even if 'Liminal Veil' is close to this format. Relatively shorter than their predecessors, these pieces are not less dense, refuges of a multitude of sonorities and influences brewed in a torrential block.

Kelly Schilling's crystalline vocals charms us from the start with their softness, a breeze both romantic and spectral sweeping the decor of a tenderly atmospheric doom. But the brutal black metal bites inflicted by the keyboardist Emily Shreve disturb this (false) quietude that they chop up with an unexpected darkness while pulsating percussions, guitars with dramatic counterforts and sparse piano notes complete to blur the horizon. Such is 'Worlds Break', a protean beginning rich in many glimmers, which ideally sums up the approach developed by Dreadnought, explorer of a sonic and sensory maze.

The following tracks are carved in the same bark. Each track fights between light and shadow, between clarity and tumult, weaving a complex and tortuous web, as witnessed by 'Liminal Veil', immersive receptacle of a black progressive where stellar keyboards, percussive beats, tearing guitar and hybrid vocals are coupled in a sinuous magma.

In the depths of these crevasses, various sonorities, doom, progressive, jazz and black metal intertwine without ever losing cohesion, as illustrated by 'Gears Of Violent Endurance' which, in barely more than six minutes, stretches out an immense landscape whose abundant richness and ambivalence of the features do not take away from its nobility or its soul. Its last minutes which fly very high towards inaccessible skies, carried by the magic voice of Kelly on a bed of enveloping percussions, touch the divine, the absolute.

Strong of its multiple ramifications, "The Endless" is an adventurous work whose limpid appearance hides a knotty tension and beside which the amateurs of diaphanous melodies cannot pass. - Official website

DREADNOUGHT

THE ENDLESS

PROFOUND LORE

DOOM