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DREAM UNENDING
Song Of Salvation

20 Buck Spin (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

Last year this Canadian / American duo released the melancholic yet majestic Tide Turns Eternal debut full-length, a riveting and ethereal expression woven into a doom metal ethos. Imagine if you will a progression onwards from classic Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride, but with extra shades of subtly while encompassing the expansive nature of, say, Disembowelment.

I guess I didn’t expect a second album so soon from Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms) and Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold), but now it’s here I’m immersed in its chasm; a bottomless pit that yawns wide and deep to the point of emotional projection and horror, while at the same time delivering an almost spiritual plateau.

Song Of Salvation twinkles with a beauty in spite of its dragging vocal strains, with the opening title track bringing glimmers of hope rather than dismal rainy moods. This is an exploratory opus, an expansive and palatial journey that transports me back to the early 90s as doom metal acts were sprawling in their sound and visiting unknown kingdoms and soundscapes.

There’s a lot to take in here ranging from stunning solo work, nodding percussion, trickling trumpet, haunting vocal melodies, and a sense of calmness, especially as ‘Secret Grief’ evokes images of a simmering downtown coolness before the Pink Floyd-esque chimes of ‘Unrequited’ drift by. There are strange contrasts at work on ‘Ecstatic Reign’ as again we get the thick coating of the guttural vocal drools and yet over a rather wistful and haunting tempo.

Dream Unending is evolving at an alarming rate and I’d be rather shocked if they didn’t reach the dizzy heights of the likes of Paradise Lost and Anathema. The world is indeed the oyster for these talented guys. Their blend of the bleak, the bombastic and the beautiful is quite a thing to behold.

Neil Arnold

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