Dreadnought - Emergence

When I saw the cover of this thing earlier before its release, I thought that Profound Lore was possibly dipping its toes into curating some alternative metal (it just has a certain mid-2000’s alternative metal look to it to me, and maybe that’s just me), which I was kind of intrigued by, and although the record itself does fall more in line with the label’s usual tastes for bleak, black doom (among other things), it does not fail to be an interesting and unique project in its own right.

The intriguing prospect of a mid-2000’s style alternative metal album somehow fitting for Profound Lore’s roster was a fleeting and hypothetical one, so after getting over it and into what Emergence actually is, it became no trouble at all to see why the label picked it up. The album is Dreadnought’s fourth, and one that clearly shows the band comfortable in and capable with their style, expressing a freedom with the unique, gothic, and even eccentric/proggy approach they take to the type of dingy doom metal that shapes their aesthetic.

Indeed, the way the band weave seamlessly in and out from thicker sections of metallic instrumentation and expressive anguish to more subtle atmospheric sections is at the level of prog expertise, and that, combined with the more adventurous sonic pallet the band use to achieve their semi-gothic, down-trodden, yet still reasonably and appreciably dynamic feel, makes the album an at least aesthetically pleasing listen in spite of the occasionally perplexing compositional choices at the smaller scale. And the opening track, “Besieged”, is exemplary of all of this, with its smooth sways back and forth from vehement despair to more melancholic meditation and the interestingly jazzy, yet eerie use of piano to conjure the feelings of subtle unease the open up into overt sorrow. And the horns that lace the song “Still” provide another example of the band’s willingness to play with a wide sonic arsenal and take the less-traveled road to produce the aesthetic they’re going for.

If there’s one thing to really be frustrated about with this album, it’s the way the muddy and layer-less production dampens so much of the dynamic that this album is clearly trying to thrive on, with the main instruments mixed so equally almost all the time. And it does fine for the band when they’re applying themselves softly and making it easier on the mix, but when they all begin to play with gusto, it becomes too much for the evenness mix to handle, and the heavier metallic sections come across way more homogenous than they should.

The sprawling epics, “Pestilent”, “Tempered”, and “The Waking Realm” are fine examples of this, as the songs’ heavier sections run out of the gate or swell into in messy dashes of confused volume levels made all too blurry by the distorted guitar presence in the mix. Meanwhile, the softer sections based on piano and hauntingly angelic clean singing come off just fine as the mix handles the lesser instrumental load adequately.

I also found that the more blackened tremolo picking sections tend to suffer more than the lower, crunchier palm-muted sections do, but that could also be due to those lower register sections being generally a good deal more compositionally creative or productive than the wallpaper-ish black metal sections. The “bridge” of sorts on “Tempered” involving the flutes/woodwinds sounds great with the guitars taking more of a rhythmic back seat to the fill-filled drumming and wild flute soloing, and the sustained strums of distorted guitar before the finale on “The Waking Realm” are far more supportive than the overblown and out of control gush of reverbed tremolo-picking on the finale itself.

It’s really unfortunate how much this album is crippled by its few flaws in the compositional and mixing departments because it really does have so much more going for it that could have shone more if it didn’t come with these issues. It is, again, still an intriguing enough album and one I would encourage those interested in prog, doom, goth rock, or all of the above to check out, and hopefully not be as put off by the mixing as I was.

I feel their sorrow/10