Here’s a little atmospheric, shoe-gazy, post rock serenity to break up the death and black metal by way of UK collaboration Dawnwalker, a project featuring members of UK acts Sacred Son (who you may remember for making metal headlines for their album cover a few years ago), Pijn, Metasoma, Gold Baby and a host of other contributors.

Though quoting the likes of Tool, King Crimson and Opeth in their promotional material, I don’t hear a lot of that. I get a more newer Envy (especially fourth track, “The Way Home”), Day Without Dawn, At the Sounddawn, latter Callisto, and other dreamier, softer hued post rock bands. Also, recent band, Ghostbound seemed to be a reference for the band’s delicately black metal injected ambient melancholy.

This is full of gorgeous, shimmering, layered strummed riffs that barely break into metal here and there with largely clean sung croons and a very rare, distant black metal rasp here and there. Opener “Crestfallen” opens with a minimalist, but addictive dreamy sway before “Pollen Cloud” delivers a short Oasis-like, mellow throb. Then “Towpath” delivers the most metal of the EP’s original tracks with black metal rasp over the patient, shimmery ambiance.

The EP’s highlight are the too short “The Way Home” with Robin Melinda Koob’s lovely delicate vocals and a blackened cover of  Washington State’s folk/Americana band Mount Eerie‘s “Lost Wisdom” where a killer frosty gallop surfaces amid the clean sung folky ambiance (where I really got the Ghost Bound vibe, even if it is a cover song) before an acoustic track “Pagan Plains” closes out this lovely little digital only release that has made me check out the band’s prior two albums.

[Visit the band's website]

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