The Australian melodic black/death metal band Dream Upon Tombs has been dreaming in tombs over the course of a 20-year slumber. After the release of a demo (Black Tales of Sorrow And Damnation) in 1997, nothing further was to be heard until another demo (Marble Night In Ecstasy) surfaced in 2020. And now, at last, a debut album named Palaces of Dust is on the horizon.
Founding member and guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Jak Shadows found reasons to begin anew, joined on the album by David (guitar, keys, strings, bass) and Jarrad Taylor (drums). He explains the album’s animating inspiration in these words:
“When mortality has been laid to rest, the streams of existence become a blood ocean unto a distant shore – a land beyond this time, un-chartable; sought by many and ruled by none…”
To help introduce the album, today we’re presenting an official lyric video for a song named “The Call” in advance of the record’s March 3rd release by Sleeping Church Records.
Everything comes together beautifully in this video — the words, the music, and the imagery are all intrinsically linked together to create an emotionally powerful and compelling experience.
The lyrics evoke grief and desolation, flickering flames devoured by night, the experience of bewitching desires and of sinking beneath an ocean of stars that shine like pearls of darkness, extinguishing life, and the sounds of angelic voices calling the protagonist home — into a sweet abyss. The imagery in the video reflects those linguistic visions, with sights of stars and waves and a body drifting beneath them into darkness, and the music reflects them as well.
The song is the kind that both swells the heart and breaks it. The guitars glimmer like starshine, bewitching the listener, but they also create undercurrents of sorrow and abandonment as the bass muses in murmuring tones. The intensity of the song builds from there, as the guitars catch fire and swirl in sounds of magnificent anguish. The drums methodically snap the neck but also convulse in bursts of blasting, and the vocals shriek the words in sounds of torment and ruin.
In strikingly vivid ways the music channels feelings of loss and pain, of fervent beseeching and broken hopes, yet as tragic as the moods are, the melodies are nonetheless beautiful and entrancing.
Jak Shadows shares these thoughts about the song you;re about to hea’:
“Each candle burns alone; it’s end, inevitable like the metronomic waves that can either calm or alarm you. Do you hear a bell in the distance, buoyant on a black horizon? The light has faded, the days forgotten, an endless deep is all you know… It’s that luring desire, emerging from a sea of madness – the beautiful nightmare that haunts us all – in our darkest hour… It’s The Call…”
Palaces of Dust was recorded at various locations in Adelaide. It was mixed by Matt Spencer at The Beyond Studio, and it was mastered by by none other than Dan Swanö at Unisound Studio in Sweden. It features logo, graphic design, and layout by Pat Di Palo.
Sleeping Church will release the album on CD and digital formats and recommends it for fans of Dissection, Sacramentum, Unanimated, Vinterland, and Katatonia.
PRE-ORDER:
Bandcamp: https://sleepingchurchrecords.bandcamp.com/
Shop: https://www.sleepingchurchrds.com
DREAM UPON TOMBS:
https://www.facebook.com/DreamUponTombs