(Below we present DGR‘s review of the new album by Dawn of Ouroboros, which was released last month by Prosthetic Records.)

Oakland’s Dawn Of Ouroboros have been a vexing band since their founding, part of a class of black metal collectives for whom the genre is one more arrow in the quiver than something to be wholly defined by. They’re part of a grouping for whom the multi-faceted, multi-genre approach has led to something less conventional than straightforward songwriting and more avant-garde with the addition of many a post-black metal and shoegaze element into their overall approach.

Being frank, there’s even been a sense within the band’s music that they’re still searching for how to jam all the pieces together, and so a journey into their discography can be a journey through just as many generally beautiful and transcendent moments as there are times when the band are still learning how to juxtapose such oppositional elements together within the same particular song.

As a result, they’ve been difficult to pin down on each album – like a creature stubbornly moving just to the side every time you’re about to finally set the specimen in place for display. They’ve been a musical cat that doesn’t want to be picked up, somehow turning to liquid and falling through your arms every time.

There is no singular approach to a band like Dawn Of Ouroboros, and so a single- dimensional approach falls to pieces within a song or two. Very few musical narratives fit the band as a result, but the one that has been steady is that as they’ve gotten deeper into their career, they’ve gotten distinctly better. Each album shows a stronger understanding of just how to take these musical parts and jam them together without it sounding like you’ve broken out a brad-nailer for that particular purpose. Their newest album Bioluminescence is the strongest example of that yet. Continue reading »