Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 06/05/2016
Label: Golden Antenna Records
The German trio has never sounded more in sync or delivered a more
cohesive project than “Pale Dawn”. The band excels at accomplishing what they
envisioned as total authenticity, free of the typical pitfalls or clichés. In
rejecting peer influence, Sun Worship has created a record that sees the band
toying with a new formula worthy of emulation itself.
“Pale Dawn”
CD//DD//LP track listing:
1).
Pale Dawn
2).
Lichtenburg Figure
3).
Naiad
4).
Perihelion
The Review:
“Pale Dawn”
succeeds just as much on what the album does not do as what it succeeds in
accomplishing. So often artists in blackgaze feel the need to drastically
change tempos, use pretty tones, or field recordings of the local religious
zealot or the intercom at an airport. Sun Worship does not do any of those things.
The Germans are through and through a metal band, not a post-rock or shoegaze
band. Sun
Worship has stated in the past they disregard the extrinsic clichés
of black metal such as corpse paint and they refuse to let predictability
infiltrate their music too. “Pale Dawn”
is very much still as dense and mesmerizing as any shoegaze record can be, but
there is nothing in the way of the band ripping through its riffs.
Sun Worship sets an unwavering pace from
the beginning to the end of the record. There are no let ups through the course
these four 7 to 11 minute tracks, they are filled with blast beats and heavy
speedy riffs. “Pale Dawn” is undoubtedly void of a large dynamic range. Post-Rock
derives it’s effectiveness from slower melodies juxtaposed with explosions of
sound, texture, color, and energy. Sun Worship elects not to use any of those
techniques and they really do not need them. The riffs are good enough and the
band displays enough shades of grey and black to keep the sound varied. The
vocals are mixed brilliantly on this record and elicit a dark tortured feeling
on the listeners. The vocals should sound low-fi enough to satisfy purists, yet
there is enough range to measure different vocal inflections. The vocals are
mixed relatively lowly, but keep a nice clean sound to them despite Lars
Enneson and Felix-Florian Tödtloff’s gruff delivery. The ending chants of the
final track “Perihelion” are the
only deviation from this formula and have a powerful effect due to the
pummeling first thirty-five minutes.
The German trio has never sounded more in sync or
delivered a more cohesive project than “Pale
Dawn”. The band excels at accomplishing what they envisioned as total
authenticity, free of the typical pitfalls or clichés. In rejecting peer
influence, Sun
Worship has created a record that sees the band toying with a new
formula worthy of emulation itself.
