Album Review: Dreadnought, The Endless
When it’s not busy being both at the same time, Dreadnought‘s fifth full-length, The Endless, is alternatingly beautiful and destructive, the Denver progressive-black-metal-and-then-some outfit weaving genres together toward an individual expressive purpose in craft and reach. It is comprised of six songs that don’t quite run directly into each other across two vinyl sides (three tracks per), each leading off with the longest piece for its half followed by two shorter cuts, so that “Worlds Break” (8:28) and “Liminal Veil” (9:09) are responsible for leading the listener into and through an atmospheric procession winding enough to make one wonder at times if there’s a path underneath at all, but guided by skillful enough hands that the answer is always yes.
Guitarist/vocalist Kelly Schilling, bassist Kevin Handlon, drummer Jordan Clancy and keyboardist/vocalist Lauren Vieira — recently replaced by Emily Shreve — have precious little to prove at this point in their tenure. A decade from their inception and nine years out from their 2013 debut, Lifewoven, they are able to bring “Worlds Break” from the mountain folk of its beginning build through post-metal lushness into scathing, volcanic aural char and ultimately into something that is neither and both and definitively Dreadnought‘s own as much of the record that follows will continue to be — hanging chimes and all — whatever whiffs of influence one might get along the way from Isis or Enslaved, Alcest, or any number of post-rock acts, jazz cats, classical pianists and so on that I’m nowhere near cool enough to know.
That their expansive approach is unified at all is impressive; it was on 2019’s Emergence and 2017’s A Wake in Sacred Waves (review here) as well, but there’s a shift in production in The Endless that pulls Clancy‘s kick down in the mix and feels less directly tied to metal than was the last album. Pete de Boer at World Famous Studios in the duly mountainous Breckinridge, Colorado, produced, mixed and mastered, and the resulting collaboration seems to adjust the balance between fluidity and impact so that as far as “Worlds Break” goes, it never feels any more disjointed than the band wants it to — when the album’s first scream and surge hits at 2:52 into the opener, that shift is supposed to be and to feel sudden, for example — and the aurally poetic rhythm that backs the melodies in the guitar, bass, keys and shared vocals between Schilling and Vieira on “Midnight Moon” is hypnotic without feeling overwrought.
Likewise, one might find throughout that some of the most intense moments aren’t necessarily when they’re blasting out throatrippers and accompanying squibbleriffs, but as with the bassy midsection of “Midnight Moon,” that beginning stretch of “Worlds Break” and the slowdown finish for side A in the title-track that will find a correspondingly doomed complement in side B’s aptly-named capper “The Paradigm Mirror,” it is the tension in their builds, the sometimes manic interplay of (largely clean) vocals and the dynamic nature of what they do that makes The Endless hit as hard as it does. It is a record you feel physically as much as you hear, and even in its moments of release — “The Endless” slowing down for an echoing-scream roll and wash that gives way to residual guitar drift — the ambience is taut.
In itself, that might seem unlikely, but it’s essential to Dreadnought‘s approach here, and it allows the band to continue exploring with sound as they make their way through the linear course of their material, introducing staticky synth at the outset of “Liminal Veil” to answer Schilling‘s vocal belting and the avant garde weighted guitar strums, atmosphere central but not at all void of emotion. “Liminal Veil” has more breadth in its nine minutes than many bands do in their entire career, but the same could be said of “The Endless” before it, which is about half as long, or the penultimate “Gears of Violent Endurance,” which follows.
As side B unfolds, the second of its three tracks brings The Endless‘ most immediate and outright blackened thrust, but refuses to be tethered just to that, turning to airy, progressive strum for a verse before digging back in, hinting at thicker tonality, then breaking altogether as Vieira and Schilling harmonize a capella to introduce and Opethian guitar figure and lead into the triumphantly melodic build of the song’s second half, not quite embodying the violence of the title but perhaps the aftermath of those gears’ grinding, immersive in a way Dreadnought aren’t always willing to be but consistent in its will to serve no gods stylistically more than it serves the interests of its own craft. That is to say, Dreadnought have an idea of who they are as a band and they’re no less able to work against it as with it and still carry their audience with them.
It is important to note that, as with any kind of extreme music, that audience needs to be willing to go. The Endless is not without its sense of challenge, either for the band challenging themselves or for their challenging their listenership to keep up with them. But the return on the investment of repeat visits is significant, and just as “Worlds Break” brought an encapsulation of what was to come — a closer’s summary slotted as the opener — so too does “The Paradigm Mirror” end the album with an underscoring of the plan that’s been at work all the while, and not just in the return of those chimes (which have been peppered here and there en route), but also the heavy post-rock wash of guitar and keys through which Schilling‘s voice cuts over a beat stark enough to feel reminiscent of Author & Punisher, a final lyric about howling at the moon leading into the last minute of wash, the chimes, and various other mountain-woods-lost-to-time communions.
Progressive music can take any number of forms, and The Endless reminds that something harsh can also be inviting. Those woods, while gorgeous, can surely kill you. Still, the command Dreadnought wield over their songs and their ability to convey uncertainty without actually being uncertain ensure that the chaos is thematic without hindering the delivery of the material itself. Something so dug in and its-own-thing is never going to be universally accessible, and there are likely those with whom The Endless won’t resonate, but in its force and fragility, coil and strike, it is cohesive to such a degree and of such a scope that it can only be called the work of masters.
Dreadnought, The Endless (2022)
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Tags: Colorado, Denver, Dreadnought, Dreadnought The Endless, Profound Lore Records, The Endless
Very excited for this even before your Enslaved and Opeth mentions! Cover art is awesome too.