Labels: Time As A Color/Dingleberry Records & Distribution/Voice Of The Unheard Records/E Un Brutto Posto Dove Vivere/La Speranza Records/Backwater Transmission
Formats: Vinyl/CD/Digital
Release Date: 09 Nov 2018
Tracklist:
1. Quiet January
2. Duration Of Gloom
3. All My Friends Are Leaving Town
4. Furnace
5. Composition Of Gloom
6. Disharmony
7. Cruel June
8. Stay
The clocks have gone forward and we're now heading into British summertime here in the UK. The morning's are lighter earlier and the evenings lighter for longer. It feels right then to be waving goodbye to the colder months with this new full-length from Italian post-hardcore band Winter Dust. Having been released digitally in November of last year, it's now seeing a full physical release on both CD and vinyl via the labels above. I was lucky enough to be sent a digipack CD copy to review, thanks to Time As A Color, who you should be more than familiar with if you've visited this blog before. Winter Dust's first music came in 2011 on the EP "Existence" and since then they've released a full-length called "Autumn Years" (2013), another EP "Thresholds" (2015) and the digital single Cruel June, which appears here. They count Envy, Russian Circles and Converge amongst their influences, so this should be exciting.
The post-rock and post-hardcore sub-genres continue to flourish, as bands explore both the more accessible and more inaccessible edges of the musical sphere and Winter Dust provides an accessible opener in the form of Quiet January, which is filled with introspective and cinematic instrumentation and spoken word samples. What follows is the slow building Duration Of Gloom, with spacey musical textures that harness a great sense of anticipation. It’s agonising anticipation that is sated not long afterwards as Winter Dust’s volume rises and the first glimpse at their hardcore comes into view. It’s sensitively delivered and the added aggression does not detract from the instrumentation in any way. Gloriously crafted post-hardcore.
There’s a real poignancy to All My Friends Are Leaving Town, which is magnified by the sedate instrumentation and quietly sung vocals during the opening two minutes. Even when the song gets heavier, Winter Dust manages to make it sound both lovely and huge (in a cinematic way!). Just let it whisk you away. Furnace might at first sound like an experimental drone song, but it’s not long before the looping sounds give way to more of what the band does best. The majority of its six-minute playing time is made up of fantastic instrumental passages, showing off the post-metal influences that Winter Dust wear so well. The vocals are present, but only in the form of brief screams that are equally as enjoyable and that briefness makes them standout.
The second half of record takes over with the short Composition Of Gloom. It’s melody is drenched in melancholy but also a healthy dose of early-morning sunshine (if you get where I’m coming from with that analogy). That early-morning sunshine/dreamy feel reverberates around the entire room to the sounds of Disharmony. You’d think with a title like that, it would be aggressive and caustic but it’s not. Again, the instrumentation takes centre stage and paints more pictures that words ever could.
At this point in the album, as penultimate song Cruel June plays, I feel it’s pointless me trying to find other ways to describe how good “Sense By Erosion” is. In a time when even sub-genres such as post-hardcore and post-metal have embraced modern and increasingly more fashionable ideas, it’s refreshing to hear a band that focus on the music and who make it sound so real. Closer Stay features swathes of piano and orchestral strings to illustrate that and to really embrace the feelings and emotions that both went into creating “Sense By Erosion” and those that radiate out at the other side. What an incredibly body of work this is. I don’t know if it could be considered for release of the year, but it really should be.
Make sure you stream "Sense By Erosion" in it's entirety below, where it's available to purchase on vinyl, CD and also digitally:-
Winter Dust - https://www.facebook.com/winterdust
It's also available from the lovely labels below:-
Time As A Color - https://timeasacolor.com/ / https://www.facebook.com/timeasacolor/
Dingleberry Records & Distribution - https://www.facebook.com/Dingleberry-records-and-distribution
Voice Of The Unheard Records - https://voturecords.com/ / https://www.facebook.com/voturecords/
E Un Brutto Posto Dove Vivere - https://www.facebook.com/eunbruttopostodovevivere/
La Speranza Records - https://www.facebook.com/LSRLabel/
Backwater Transmission - https://www.facebook.com/backwatertransmission/
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