Edinburgh-formed Progressive Metal heavyweights Dvne take their latest step forward with the accomplished Voidkind (Metal Blade Records).
Boy, these guys can play. The sound is top-notch throughout, the effects-heavy atmosphere swinging from light to shade and back again. What the album severely lacks, though, is memorable songs, or identifiable, distinctive passages of music one can easily retain. It really is hard work.
Most of the tracks stop to draw breath, with interludes from the fragile to the fantastical, the cosmic to the psychedelic, before the sheer power explodes again. This is the Dvne way, but there is an over-reliance on the well-worn tactic of a slow section, an atmospheric bit, then a fast, battery bit, with a riff slalom to the end. Some might call it Post-Metal, some might call it old hat.
Like Atlanta legends Mastodon, to whom they have already been compared, you know these guys are here to get serious. A bit of satire or levity would not go astray – on this evidence, Dvne don’t have a humerus (sic) bone in their body.
Voidkind still impresses through its sheer scale and ambition, its pure meaty sandwich-ness, and yes, Dvne can be hooky as well as heavy.
The album touches a lot of genre bases: Doom, Sludge and Stoner among them, and the mix of clean singing and coarse, growling vocals is just one more example of the dramatic grasp and control of dark and light. But it can still be very much of a muchness, much of the time – something of a dense, droning dirge, with no genuine bangers.
This band have a strong following, though, and “Summa Blasphemia” already promises to be a live favourite, its drive, its down swoops and up swings. The drumming is particularly tasty on this one, Scotland’s Dudley Tait excelling, as he does throughout. The kit-bashing takes a step up on the massive “Reliquary”, later on the album.
“Eleonora” opens like a Tool epic, vocals reminiscent of Maynard himself, in the approach, if not quality, then we’re quickly back into the drums and the riffs – riffs on the sweep, drums in the deep. “Eleonora” takes a pause for breath (yes, that thing), with more Tool-like meanderings, before re-building to an inevitable crescendo which, again, is surely destined to go down well with the faithful in a live setting.
“Abode Of The Perfect Soul” includes sections which are also reminiscent of Maynard & Co., particularly in their much-lauded Lateralus period.
Then there’s the fairly direct, relatively brief (5:23), straight-ahead bludgeoning of “Reaching For Telos” – the vocals here more reminiscent of Robert Harvey from The Music (“Take The Long Road …”, anyone?), plus the anthemic “Pleroma” and the Eastern-influenced “Sarmatae,” with its superior, staccato drumming.
The lyrics are more or less impenetrable: “Reflections resting in aquamarine. Dreamscape mutters, Distant murmurs.” Or “Disciples parched lips, imbibe sable revered essence. With dried throats consumed to expand, into divine command. Just for example.
The band’s name has sumfink to do with Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga Dune, don’t “u” know? And they are reportedly into Dan Simmons’ 1989 novel Hyperion.
Closing opus “Cobalt Sun Necropolis” clocks in at almost ten minutes and, like much that has gone before, is an ear-bending exercise in brutal/beautiful musicality which charges its way through several movements before ending in a guitar, bass and drums work-out that would put many “similar” bands to shame for sheer power and commitment. And that’s all good, obviously.
Buy the album here:
https://www.metalblade.com/dvne/
7 / 10
CALLUM REID