Mastodawn

Angry Metal Guy Sep 30, 2025

By GardensTale

Though not all post-metal is instrumental, almost all instrumental metal bands play some variation of post-metal. One could write a riveting dissertation exploring the reasons behind this phenomenon and its implications, if one were inclined towards musical studies and history; alas, I am but a humble observer of such odd patterns and have no definitive answers. Perhaps it is part of how heavily defined by vocals many genres are; perhaps the textured and buildup-heavy nature of post-metal simply lends itself well to instrumental approaches. Greek 5-piece we.own.the.sky makes no effort to break the pattern on its third album In Your Absence, but as a fan of the style, I have no complaint. But it can be a devilishly tricksome affair to eschew vocals altogether without getting stale. How do the sky-owners fare?

As annoyingly hip the stylization of the band name is, so expertly crafted is In Your Absence. No two songs are interchangeable, and rarely does any track feel particularly overlong. Refreshingly for instrumental post-metal, we.own.the.sky does not often lean on languid melancholy. Most tracks have energy and momentum, emerging through the darker, djent-adjacent notes of opener “The Urge to Prey,” the effervescent bliss of “Everbreathing” and the feverish, drum-heavy “Eclipse.” The structures hew further from the expansive and exploratory, aligning closer to traditional verse-chorus setups, and it makes for an immediate, accessible album like few in this style can manage.

This is clearly a deliberate choice. Even longer tracks like “Swarm” and “Liminal Space” stay well under 8 minutes and use their extra time in buildups that return to established phrases and intelligent variations on the rich stock of melodies the guitars provide. “Swarm” is an especially powerful song, its gentle opening notes morphing into a grand ascending beast, the melody carried upon a shifting syncopated foundation. It’s a one-two punch with the sweeping joy of “Everbreathing,” whose bright tremolos remind me of the most recent Alcest. Closer “Silhouette” shares that similarity, and it’s the sole track that does contain vocals, which provides a warm well of emotional contrast and provides rich wonder as the album’s denouement.

The biggest bump in the road is “Fragile, Alive,” a slow and gentle track that skates dangerously close to saccharine soft rock. It’s smack dab in the middle of In Your Absence and is a hard stop for all the momentum built by “Swarm” and “Everbreathing”. The melody is fairly repetitive and a bit mawkish, and the track doesn’t move away from it until the midway point. It’s not outright bad, especially when it opens up and gains more heft, but it is the album’s Achilles’ heel, worsened by its central placement in the track list. Thankfully, the hard-hitting follow-up “Eclipse” is an immediate pick-me-up, and we.own.the.sky return to form within seconds. Dressed with a delicious guitar tone and even-keeled mix, the production1 puts the cherry on the cake. It matches the compositions for an enticing, immediate sound that’s as listenable as it is versatile.

With In Your Absence, we.own.the.sky place yet another nail in the coffin of the idea that quality and fame go hand in hand. In fact, the band kicks over every assumption that crosses their path. Greek metal is known for grandeur and symphonies, yet In Your Absence is concise and introspective. Post-metal tends toward texture-heavy dreaminess, yet this is melody-driven and direct. With a decade and a half behind them and In Your Absence, their third album, under their wing, we.own.the.sky have proven themselves more than capable of producing music that’s beautiful, transporting, and downright addictive. The world’s been sleeping on this band. Don’t miss out.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Dunk!Records
Websites: weownthesky.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/weowntheskygr
Releases Worldwide: September 19th, 2025

#2025 #35 #Alcest #DunkRecords #GreekMetal #InYourAbsence #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #Sep25 #weOwnTheSky

Angry Metal Guy Jul 17, 2024

Mountaineer – Dawn and All That Follows Review

By Carcharodon

The legendary Huck n Roll having sadly departed these pages, it falls to me to pick up the Mountaineer reviewing baton, as the Oakland, California sextet stick to their two-yearly release cycle, returning with Dawn and All That Follows. Across his three reviews (3.5-3.0-3.5), Mountaineer clearly struck a chord with olde man Huck, their brand of reflective, shoegaze-y post-metal / -doom conjuring atmospheres and moods that tickled his fancies. The ‘low’ point in the Californians’ AMG journey being the 3.0/5.01 awarded to 2020’s Bloodletting. Having failed, if I may be so bold, to diagnose exactly why this record didn’t quite live up to the strengths of its predecessor, Huck correctly—in my humble opinion—alighted on the issue with Bloodletting in his musings on the successor, 2022’s Giving Up the Ghost: it was too damn long!

This gives me pause as I dive into the band’s fifth length, Dawn and All That Follows, which nudges very close to Bloodletting’s runtime. The band’s lineup has remained remarkably stable, something that comes through in their sound. From the initial plucking and the husky clean vocals from Miguel Meza on opener “Cradlesong,” they are almost instantly identifiable as Mountaineer. However, where previous efforts were packed with exhausted Neurosis-esque melancholy (Passages) or a bleak sense of loss (Bloodletting), Dawn …’s defining emotion is one of whimsical dreaminess, which the striking cover art captures excellently. Both The Smashing Pumpkins and Baroness are cited as reference points for this album, but to place this record in those bands’ discogs, we would be looking to Machina/The Machines of God and Yellow & Green (with a greater emphasis, sadly, on Green), respectively.

Hints of Mountaineer’s sludgy, post-hardcore roots remain (most notably on the title track), but much of the cathartic energy of their earlier work is gone, while Meza’s harsh, post-metal roars have also largely disappeared (again, the title track, and fleeting passages of “Dark Passenger” and “Testimonial” apart). Instead, the dominant mood is one of floating through slowly shifting soundscapes. Though rugged, the terrain has suffered from serious erosion and is decidedly hilly, rather than mountainous, with the glorious peaks (like Bloodletting’s “South to Infinity”) mostly absent. Throughout Dawn …, you will find yourself bathed in walls of reverb-heavy, post-metal chords and rough, blues-laden melodies, while Meza’s clean vocals swirl and soar. The title track, the record’s longest cut, features all these elements but also showcases what previously defined Mountaineer, as the riffs become a landslide and Meza’s harsh vox cause avalanches.

As before, Meza is Mountaineer’s greatest asset, and make no mistake, his cleans are strong, with a keening edge that conveys a real sense of emotion. However, they aren’t quite striking enough to carry a record of this length, without the offset and texture added by his harsher side, which is used sparingly. Similarly, the guitars have reverted to what we saw on Bloodletting, where the addition of two extra guitarists (as against 2018’s Passages, recorded as a quartet), was not obvious in the sound laid down. Having escaped that trap on Giving Up the Ghost, where the trio were more clearly separable, Dawn … represents something of a regression. Not across the board, with the likes of “Parallels” making good use of the 18 strings available in its bending, downbeat rhythms but in general the evenness of the material here is its Achilles heel. Staying true to the loud, slightly crushed mix that was a feature of the past three records, also does Dawn … few favours. That sound worked fine when Mountaineer’s post-rock sensibilities sat alongside their sludgier roots, but here it lessens the impact of what is a more delicate work overall.

My first foray into Mountaineering (as a reviewer, but not as a fan) is a slightly disappointing one, if I’m honest. Closest in tone to the last outing, Giving Up the Ghost, but with nearly 20 minutes more material, Dawn and All That Follows creaks under its own weight. Where Bloodletting was a slightly uneven affair, this album is more cohesively written than that earlier record, which it almost matches in runtime, but it lacks any real standout moments. Where the likes of “South of Infinity” punctuated and lifted Bloodletting, the only track that achieves that here, is the title track. Luckily, that does land around the halfway mark, giving a much-needed injection of energy, but Mountaineer has over-indulged one side of their sound, at the expense of what previously made them so captivating. I’m afraid that, for large parts of this album, I find myself drifting off, rather than carried away.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Labels: A Thousand Arms Music (US) and Dunk!records (EU)
Websites: mountaineerlfr.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mountaineer
Releases Worldwide: July 26th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AThousandArmsMusic #AmericanMetal #Baroness #Bloodletting #DawnAndAllThatFollows #DunkRecords #Jul24 #Mountaineer #Neurosis #PostRock #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #TheSmashingPumpkins

Mountaineer - Dawn and All That Follows Review | Angry Metal Guy

A review of Dawn and All That Follows by Mountaineer, available on July 26th via Dunk!records in the EU and A Thousand Arms Music in the US.

Angry Metal Guy

Angry Metal Guy Apr 21, 2024

Divided – Light Will Shine Review

By Dear Hollow

Throughout the tapestry of shimmering tones, weighty riffs, and desperate fry vocals in Light Will Shine, a common thread courses, of vulnerability and tension. Belgium’s Divided offers a style not unlike Glassing, Amenra, and Envy, with crystalline melodies colliding with unforgiving heaviness, with a distinctly unfriendly guitar harmonic approach. However, it professes a soundtrack for anxiety, recalling the tragically short-lived Sufferer project in its depiction of inner struggle and striving for better. Light Will Shine offers no easy answers, but is a voice through the storm.

Influenced by acts like Chat Pile, Brutus, and Psychonaut, the four-piece fuses post-metal, screamo, post-hardcore, and noise rock in shifting sands of beauty and ugliness alike. Its debut Light Will Shine is built around jagged movements and melodies with nowhere to go, drummer/vocalist Pepjin Vandaele the backbone in his manic Converge’s Ben Koller-esque percussion, complemented by Staf Walschap’s pulsing bass, and vocal pendulum between vicious fries and grungy Chino Moreno drawls, while guitarists Jelle Rouquart and Torre Maertens bouncing between sprawling chugs, scathing tremolo, and delicate plucking. Nothing feels hardened and jaded, but a bleeding heart plastered firmly onto Divided’s sleeve. Light Will Shine is far from perfect, but for its unique and captivating portrayal of mental struggle, it is worth a look.

Most notable about Light Will Shine is Divided’s use of melody, which for the purposes of its anxiety-induced theme, make good use of the unsettling. Tracks like “Cinder,” “Remaining in Limbo,” and “The Warped Loop” utilize this fluid and warbling use of upper fretboard magic to create dissonant harmonies alongside a punchy trainwreck of mathy-meets-post riffs that squawk and clatter alongside vicious shrieks in ways that recall Oceana’s Birtheater. The solid blend of the subdued and the dissonant pervade tracks like “The City Slowly Undresses,” in which piano and flute collide in wonky ways with stinging melodies across its slow crescendo, or closer “Sleepers,” which relies on a nearly midwestern emo plucking motion recalling American Football warped viciously by these crashing melodics and a noise rock Melvins-esque vocal approach. The melodies that are utilized here toe an odd line between intentionally disconcerting and unintentionally awkward, but best utilized in nine-minute epic “The Vicious Circle,” they swarm and bleed but find no resolution.

When the melodies turn questionable and the songwriting becomes jarring, occurrences which admittedly happen often, Light Will Shine takes on an awkward feel. Tracks like “Days Undone (So Long)” and “Remaining in Limbo” feature these melodic snafus, which feel too derailing to be intentional, while the shifting passages in “The Warped Loop” fall short periodically. At its worst, Divided can be too unpredictable in its shifting passages (the jolting whiplash in “The Vicious Loop” is both allegorical and simply too much) and then too repetitive in its ambition (the extremely repetitive ending of “Sleepers” nearly renders the track a detractor). In spite of an interesting and wonky blend of manic shrieks and grungy drawls, Vandaele’s vocals are simply too loud in the mix, while the latter croons feel awkward in tracks like “The Vicious Loop” or “Days Undone (So Long).”

I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression this past year, and much of Divided’s sound feels like the crushing fear of insufficiency or imposter syndrome that I’ve realized has plagued me most of my life. In particular, the slowly unwinding melodics of “The City Slowly Undresses” nearly made me jump out of my skin with how close it felt to be stuck in my head. In this way, Light Will Shine feels like a masterwork. However, in the odd fusion of post-metal, screamo, post-hardcore, and noise rock, the quartet regularly toes the line between masterful avant-garde composers and those who have just picked up a guitar for the first time. Divided’s sound will feel like a broken home to some and a broken speaker to others – which is perhaps the greatest conundrum and compliment I can offer for this piece of art.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: ~190 kb/s mp3
Label: Dunk! Records
Websites: dividedbelgium.bandcamp | facebook.com/dividedbelgium
Releases Worldwide: March 29th, 2024

#2024 #30 #Amenra #AmericanFootball #BelgianMetal #Brutus #ChatPile #Converge #Deftones #Divided #DunkRecords #Envy #Glassing #LightWillShine #Mar24 #Melvins #NoiseRock #PostHardcore #PostMetal #Psychonaut #Review #Reviews #Screamo