Mouth of the Architect – Dawning

June 25, 2013 • Translation Loss Records

One of my favorite and one of the most underappreciated bands in the "post-metal" scene, and it's good to see they're more or less the same band they've always been with their fourth album.

One of the first things I noticed about Dawning is that it's a bit slower than their previous material, with a lot more of the post-rock sound slowly creeping its way in more noticeably. (See "Patterns"' long, tense buildup to actual metal just in the last 20% of the song; or the slight Earth-esque country twang in "The Other Son".) Fortunately the band knows how to play that well, using loads of dynamics and jumping from quiet clean bridges to pounding, heavy sludge riffs in a way that sounds very natural.

This album also includes lots of clean vocals thrown in as well, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about them—they seem to work okay most of the time, as Dawning is a relatively melodic album to start with; however I've always loved the band's harsh vocals and hate to hear them used less often. They definitely don't subtract from the album's quality, though.

They're definitely not breaking a lot of new ground, and there are some moments that are uninspired, like the lackluster "It Swarms". But there are some equally kickass parts too that demonstrate just how well Mouth of the Architect exemplifies sludge, like "Sharpen Your Axes" or "How This Will End". Mouth of the Architect's handle on melody is probably one of the best (if not the best) among similar bands, and it really goes a long way in helping them write good, memorable material.

On the whole, Dawning doesn't satisfy in quite the same way that The Ties That Blind did, for instance (though I do think it's a step up from Quietly). But it's still definitely a good album worthy of this classic band's discography, and it's good to see that they haven't gone to crap like a lot of bands that die way before the ten-year mark.

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