Review & Full Album Premiere: Lamassu, Made of Dust
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on June 19th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream the premiere of Lamassu’s Made of Dust in its entirety. Album is out Wednesday, June 21, and can be preordered through Bandcamp here.]
It’s true though, about the dust. You, me, the planets, the moons, the stars, the sun, almost all astronomical phenomena that’s not dark matter or dark energy — and for all we know, them too — either is now dust, or at one point was dust drawn together by gravity, or is a remnant from that process of galaxy and star formation, as Melbourne’s Lamassu asserts with their gatefold 2LP second long-player Made of Dust. It’s pretty dramatic to think ‘we are star stuff’ in your best Neil DeGrasse-Tyson voice, quite something else to think of it in the context of how we end up at the end of our particular ride through existence. Less than the blink of a cosmic eyelid we are, then, again, dust.
Themes of dirt and being buried in it. Contemplations of death and rebirth. Water. Seeking. Exploitation of the earth and people on it. A troubled planet and time. Amid the breadth of echo in the vocals and plus-sized, crunch-toned and declarative riffing, and the post-Jerry Cantrell vocal style of guitarist Chris Fisher, Lamassu unfold an unmanageable 11 songs and 68 minutes of heavy soul-searching, accompanied by complex structures and pieces like “Washed Away” with its standout hook and the later nine-minute centerpiece “Sorrow of the Children,” which is slow and patient like doom and still has some classic metal ballad resonance in its midsection as Fisher‘s vocals prove up to the task of carrying the song melodically.
Fisher, guitarist/backing vocalist Matt Dawkins — also the Mellotron on “Something Else,” Rhodes, etc. — bassist Al Cooke and drummer Nick Rad remind a bit in that middle cut of Apostle of Solitude, but the fervency of chug in the title-track and the grand places explored in the slow-motion angularity of “The Fog” are individualized factors, and even at their most doomed, Lamassu skirt the lines both of traditionalism and of metal without committing outright to the genre rigidity of either. They are stronger for that.
Begun in 2021, Made of Dust is at least two years in the making in following Lamassu‘s 2019 debut, Into the Empty, recorded and mixed by Mike Deslandes, Dawkins helming additional recording in Fall 2022, with Paul Fox at Indie Masters mastering. As the tracks vary in runtime and somewhat in mood, they are drawn together by a general largesse conveyed in a sense of space, be it echo on the vocals or reverb on the guitar — the recording sounds at least as vast the the guitars, bass and drums sound ‘big’ — with two interludes breaking up the procession across each intended LP, and diversity in tempo and mood more than actual arrangement. But the material doesn’t sound staid, however dug in it gets.
Third track “Shit Town, Misery” answers back to “Washed Away” near the beginning of the record; a relatively quicker pace distinguishing both songs from the stately lumber of opener “Battle Cry” or the 10-minute finale “Tin Man,” which meets the demand of its closing position in reach as well as runtime, offering summary of Made of Dust‘s scope and putting emphasis on what has most worked for it in terms of the performances captured, whether that’s the tension in the emotive rolling verse early or the furious drumming — somehow subtle beneath the soaring vocals of the moment — near the sudden-stop crescendo.
Like “Battle Cry” (7:56), “The Fog” (8:18), and “Sorrow of the Children” (9:29) — the contingent of longer material, though the line isn’t so clear with the title-track at 7:07 or both “Washed Away” and the Pallbearer-esque riffing of the penultimate “White Pills” at 6:30; it’s not such a strict divide between short-songs/long-songs in terms of craft and modus — “Tin Man” uses the space created in the mix to meditate on mortality lyrically in the chorus, “Clock struck, time is running/Clock struck, time’s no friend/Clock struck, time is running/Clock struck, time’s no friend of mine,” the title seeming to question what’s important in life even as the actual song reminds of its fleeting nature, time as a linear, one-way experience. If time is running, inherently then, time is running out. “In our final days, our final hours, we live.” It is the fact that they’ve built such vivid worlds across Made of Dust that allows Lamassu to unmake one so effectively at the end.
In terms of melody and presence, much of the album rests on Fisher‘s vocal delivery, and he answers the call in lyrics and arrangements that feel no less marked in their intent than the riffs and nod surrounding. He is not just following his own guitar, as the verses of “Battle Cry” and “Washed Away” demonstrate early on, and whether it’s the Dawkins-penned lyrics to “Something Else” — hearing it, you can almost tell the difference in Fisher‘s patterning of “I, I sense there’s something else to this, something else to this” — or the calling out from beneath the more intense bursts of “Shit Town, Misery,” or the open reaches in the quiet but spacious intro to “The Fog,” the vocals are a unifying factor in the material, part of the atmosphere even as they are distinct from it, and essential to the proceedings front to back. Answering the doom of “White Pills,” “Sorrow for the Children” is dynamic in its execution, swelling at the outset to a mournful roll, spreading wide in the middle and turning back to the heft in resolute, solo-topped fashion before residual amp noise fades to close. Fisher‘s voice is a vital component of that charge, and malleable to where the song — any of them, really — is going in a given part.
At nearly 70 minutes, Made of Dust is no minor undertaking, and when one factors in that its exploration is internal as well as external — that is, it’s not only seeking the next version of the band’s approach instrumentally, it’s also thoughtful in its lyrical journey — the substance on offer would seem to meet the high standard it’s holding for itself. Doing so assures that Lamassu make an impression of their own, whatever elements might be familiar throughout, and gives them ground on which to build their next work, which is exactly what they most sound like they want to do: move forward.
