Dvne – Etemen Ænka
Release Date: 19th March 2021
Label: Metal Blade Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Metal, Post-Metal, Doom, Sludge.
FFO: Mastodon, The Ocean, Thy Catafalque, Kylesa, Baroness.
Review By: Jonathon Hopper
Taking their name from Frank Herbert’s seminal ‘Dune’ series of novels, Edinburgh’s Dvne are nothing if not ambitious; two albums in and they’re already on the concept album. Not only that, but the narrative – charting the progress of a civilisation over a period of centuries as utopic ideals become tainted, leading to rising inequality and the development of a downtrodden under-class – is something of which Herbert, Huxley, Iain M Banks, or any number of sci-fi luminaries would be proud.
Opener Enuma Elis is a titanic pile driver delivered with guttural Mastodon-style bombast. A short, sharp delve into the world Dvne have created and the perfect scene setter.
Towers – part inspired by the book ‘Terminal World’ by Alastair Reynolds – follows. A monstrous manifesto; crushingly heavy in the opening movement, the prominent synths giving an eerie, other-World feel that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Dimmu Borgir release.
It’s a brave new World when compared to Dvne’s previous release – 2017’s solid if unspectacular ‘Asheran’. If that album was the foundations then Etemen Ænka is the super structure – firing skywards on a potent cocktail of bone crushing riffs ripping at a soundscape that’s more colossal than a whale on steroids.
Unsurprisingly perhaps given the bands literary influences, Etemen Ænka is an album in constant flux. Hard yet soft; heavy yet light; expansive yet intimate – many bands make a play of the contradictions inherent in their craft, yet on this evidence Dvne have elevated this to an art form.
Nowhere is this more keenly felt than on Omega Severer – a nine minutes plus voyage through an ocean of choppy guitars that ramps up the tension before letting it break on a shore of delicate plucking and vocal harmonisation courtesy of Lissa Robertson.
Arguably the album’s high point in an album of highs – the hypnotic sway bringing to mind the avant garde lunacy of Thy Catafalque on a doomed rocket flight with German palaeontology enthusiasts The Ocean. As TC’s ‘Naiv’ was one of my albums of 2020 that really is very high praise indeed.
For all the prog flourishes and weighty song lengths this is one lean, muscular work; every note, chord and vocalisation serving the wider concept. With the traditional verse/ chorus/ verse song structure jettisoned in favour of a fluid series of movements, the result is music that is constantly shifting – from the pulverising Si-XIV to the ethereal dreamscape of Mieccha, the haunting beauty of the Goblin-esq Weighing of the Heart to the gorgeous vocal tones of Asphodel and the sheer majesty of closer Satuya.
An album of tremendous scope, yet still maintaining a cohesive sense of whole, Etemen Ænka is epic in all the best ways. A heavy metal space opera; this is the sound of civilizations rising and falling. In an age of digital downloads where the single track would be king, this is exactly what the album was invented for. 
(5 / 5)
