(written by Islander)
The lineup of Dwelling Below — drummer/vocalist Jared Moran, bassist Anthony Wheeler, and guitarist Nicolas Turner — overlaps significantly with those of the bands Hierarchies and Acausal Intrusion. United in Dwelling Below, they create a variant of doom/death metal. But if you’re at all familiar with their work in those other bands, you can guess (correctly) that their version of doom/death is a twisted one, occupying an ever-changing intersection of the conventional and the unconventional, with results that are as unpredictable as they are abominable.
Dwelling Below made their advent with a self-titled debut album in 2023, and now they’re back with a second head-warper named Wearisome Guardians, which will be released on October 31st by Transcending Obscurity Records. What we’ve got for you today is the third song from the new album to be disgorged so far, a mind-ruiner named “Sacraments“.
Long-form songs are evident in the new album’s track list, and “Sacraments” is one of those, a 10 1/2 minute beast. It quickly discloses an unnerving high-low contrast, with a heavily thrumming bass and horrid gutturals in the depths and feverishly wailing and flickering guitars in the upper reaches. In between, the drums clobber, clatter, and furiously blast.
Having seized attention over the song’s harrowing first minute or so, Dwelling Below then lead listeners through a nightmarish and often bizarre labyrinth. In their momentum they heave and stagger but also race head-long. In their riffing they jolt and whine, sizzle like acid on the boil and slowly ooze misery, or elevate like obsidian monuments to hellish lords. The ghastly vocals explode in howls of torment or fury. Solo guitars, shrill and piercing in tone, repeatedly leap out and deliriously spiral and scream.
At times the drums and bass unite to create massive earthquake-level upheavals. At other times they create convulsions of violence. At times the music sounds brazenly demented, at other times hopelessly distraught. The clean-toned guitar soloing never fails to spike the mind.
At one point in this twisting excursion the bass grumbles its own solo, backed by rattling beats, paving the way toward guitars that seem to quiver in pain and shine like a demon moon. In turn, that grim and gripping experience leads listeners toward the song’s most spectacularly unhinged soloing.
Near the end, the pace slows further and the music brutishly pounds and hammers, coldly and heartlessly reverberating. Even then, the lead guitar screeches and whines, no more sane than it has ever been but as if fighting to survive the severe trauma being inflicted upon it.
Transcending Obscurity will release the album on CD and digital formats, with apparel and other merchandise, all featuring the album’s nightmarish cover art by Alex Shadrin (Nether Temple Design). They recommend it for fans of Hierarchies, Viande, Acausal Intrusion, Winter, Autopsy, and Incantation.
Find more info via the links below, and we’ve also included streams of the two previously released songs from the album, its title track and opener “Wearisome Guardians” and the follow-on track “Unfolding Universe“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://dwellingbelow.bandcamp.com/album/wearisome-guardians
http://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
http://eu.tometal.com/
DWELLING BELOW:
https://facebook.com/dwellingbelow