Dwaal – Never Enough
Release Date: 29th September 2023
Label: Dark Essence Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Sludge, Atmospheric Doom.
FFO: Marianas Rest, Yob.
Review By: Jeffery Childress
When any metalhead thinks about the land of Norway, he/she will most likely bear in mind black metal more so than any other subgenre that you can take into account; After all, black metal was in fact born in Norway. Bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone and Emperor ruled the roost and became THE heavy metal sound in Norway. But we won’t go into a history lesson today, no, no, today we are going to discuss something a little different. Today we will be taking up Norwegian doom metal; or more specifically, Oslo’s own, Dwaal. Dwaal will release their 2nd full length album Never Enough on September 29th on their label Dark Essence Records. If you are a fan of sludge and atmospheric doom and for whatever unforeseeable reason you are NOT excited for this record, you are wrong, and you need to be getting excited.
Dwaal has experienced its own fair share of unfortunate turns of events over the last few years with all of the Covid goings-on, line-up changes and illness, however like a phoenix rising from the flames the band has risen above any obstacles that have stepped in their way and laid down a 5 track full length release that fans of Marianas Rest, Yob and Type-O-Negative will thoroughly enjoy.
The track All Masters All Servants opens this album with an abysmal, heavy plunge that I wholly love. I was fully impressed with Bjornar’s vocals as well as Anders’ drum work here. I started grooving from this first track, all while cruising Anders’ ride cymbal until the very last beat. In this metalheads opinion, however, Pseudanthium Aionion is the crème de la crème of this whole record. It has been quite a long time since a song has made me bang my head and jam as hard as I did listening to this song. Its astounding fuzzy guitar work by Eigil and Rikke provided the right sludgy heavy distortion that is needed in order to make this song what it is. This banger is the epitome of what the memes that read, “Slow heavy metal music playing” are indicating. Siri really puts her synth prowess on display on the entire record, but I feel like she genuinely introduces herself on the album upon the slow, calm piano intro of Leichenhalle. Her beautiful keystrokes set off the whole atmospheric aura of the song. Siri’s performance is that of one that makes the listener wonder, ‘How does she come up with all those layers?!’. Eigil and Rikke are at it again here with their killer musicianship all the while laying a crunchy foundation for Stian to provide an eerily groovy bassline that fills out any voids that may have been left in the song, which I assure you, there aren’t many. Anders only adds icing to the cake with an absolutely punishing drum outro. Then there is Repentance of a Bastard delivering a slug of dark and evil from the very first note leading to a trance inducing bridge that seems to usher the listener back into a center of balance just prior to a huge wall of sound that ultimately ends in a clobbering outro movement absolutely meant for you to bang your head. So let-r-rip, because you will certainly want to be in that mode once you reach the heavy, menacing riff of You Will Never Be Enough.
All in all, this record slaps! I give this record a solid 4.0 which is the highest rating that I have given an album thus far. It’s just that not many bands blow you away as easily once you reach a certain point in your life, but then you stumble across a jewel like this one. This one is more than an album that I “just recommend” that you check out; this is one of those that I suggest that you throw in your player and let it carry you away for a while on its dark and euphoric wake. Until next time, fellow doomers! Stay extreme!
(4 / 5)
