ALBUM REVIEW: Dissolve Into Ash – Dusk

It’s a rare thing to have been in a band for 28 years. It’s even rarer to find a band that leaves 28 years between studio albums, but so it is for Wisconsin, US-based death-doom outfit DUSK. After their 1995 debut …Majestic Thou In Ruin, they retreated into the shadows until 2015. Since then, they’ve put out a compilation of their early works, and the 2018 EP Withdraw, gearing up to record and release their latest long play offering.

Borne of the sadness and turmoil caused by the global pandemic, Dissolve Into Ash is an album about the downfall of mankind. It fittingly takes its title from a Latin funeral dirge, of which there is a haunting rendition on the opening track, Beacon Obscured. Tinting their death-doom riffs with blackened elements makes the music stark and dense, and Steve Crane’s howls and moans transport the listener to a desolate place.

That theme of apocalyptic loneliness persists with tracks like Ancient Passage and The Promise Passed. You get the big riff, you get the guttural bellows, you get the rapid drums and the rumbling bass, occasionally you get a brief respite where the instrumentation gives way to atmospherics before swan diving back into the traditionally sourced assault. Same again with The Dim Divide. And Dormant Form. And Shrouded In Mist. And…

The quintet play their craft well. The music sweeps through hard-hitting riffs and brutal roars, tremolo-picked cascades and catastrophically heavy chords, but across an album of almost 50 minutes, it becomes a familiar wash that lacks any real impact. And that’s the frustration – DUSK are making music that looks great on paper, but through eight tracks, Dissolve Into Ash leaves listeners with no clear reaction. A large part of this could be a lack of variety; drop into any moment of this album and it seems to be indistinguishable from the next. Thematically, you could argue that it makes sense for the end of mankind to be this bare, but on a death-doom record, you want to feel something, anything.

In and of themselves, the songs are good. The opening track alone is more than enough to compel you to listen on. DUSK sound huge and all-encompassing, Crane sounds like a fantastical beast let loose, everybody plays their part with an intensity that could be really special. But every track feels like you could have that same reaction should you pick that as your starting point. In that way you could argue that the album really does portray the endless cycle of empty days, should mankind cease to be.

To release a new album 28 years after your last one is a bold choice, but unfortunately DUSK don’t stick the landing here with Dissolve Into Ash. As a single, or maybe even an EP, the content would be fine, but a full album feels repetitive and aimless. More than any of that though and for an album about sadness, it’s the emotional connection that is sorely lacking and that irrevocably hampers Dissolve Into Ash.

Rating: 5/10

Dissolve Into Ash is out now via Dark Symphonies and The Crypt Vinyl.

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