Dreamwell : "In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You"

 This band shifts from black gaze to more melodic forms of hardcore and harsher expressions of metal. Their singer is a pivotal force in what enables these transformations. The second song starts off even more melodic until the more hard-core shouted vocals bring the abrasion crashing against the transcendence. After this song they even dip their combat boots into pop punk. That is littered oddly with blast beats. It is not the first time I have heard screamo blended with black metal, but this is done in an angular fashion that is more unique. "All Towers Drawn in..." is more explosive and finds their feral gnashing of teeth touch on a darker more Full of Hell-like fury. I like the way they bring dissonance in. It creates a soul-wrenching bleakness. 

They continue to lash out in more of a hard-core fashion with "Obliesk of Hands". The light poppy touch of the vocals in the chorus takes some of the string out, though I think what these more melodic moments do is provide the needed dynamic contrast that allows the more venomous sections greater impact to bite your ears. "It Will Hurt, and You Won't Get to be Surprised" opens with a more post-rock passage that becomes more scathing once the vocals come in. This song finds them digging into some of the album's heaviest riffs. "Reverberations of a Sickly Wound" is an instrumental that lingers over an ambient landscape. Things get moving again with "Blighttown Type Beat". The vocals in the more shouted yet spoken post-Myspace style punk. 

"Body Fountain' is brief and punches in a manner with more in common with Converge. The last two songs are their longest at over six and a half minutes each. Melodic vocals contrast the dark brooding hypnotic flow of the sludge slow riffs that ring with post-rock shimmer. It is heavier sonically than it is heavy metal until things start to slowly combust as it builds. The last song works off the more screamo side of what they do and takes that into more intense and heavier places than other bands of that genre muster. I will give this album a 9.5, I think it's an excellent step in an original direction while working with sounds from familiar genres, more heavy bands could take note of what is going on here.