Dyskinesia - Dalla Nascita (2011)
Rating: A-
As much as Isis breaking up upset me, what future did they really have as a band? Their last album Wavering Radiant had some catchy songs and benefited from an increased use of keyboard atmosphere, but Isis already put out their most important work years earlier. Sludge metal peaked and said what it had to say. Or so I thought. I haven’t heard a sludge metal release in a long time that didn’t immediately make me think, “Oh, they’re just ripping off Isis and Neurosis,” but Dyskinesia’s new album Dalla Nascita brings something different to the table. Sure, the band uses a lot of the same elements as the aforementioned bands, but does so in a new and compelling way. Plus, their album is available to download legally for free (the Italian band has a few other releases available for download, as well).
Musically, Dalla Nascita is much more drone oriented than other sludge metal groups, yet still very accessible. What this means is their song structures are looser and don’t fall prey to standard genre trappings. With Dyskinesia, you don’t exactly know what to expect. You can, however, expect their music to be fairly slow, but the songs are pretty varied for this particular genre. “Dalla Nascita” begins with a grinding, droning piece, which gives way to a propulsive, post-metal track that teases the listener with a potentially explosive moment that never arrives. Normally I would say that’s a bad thing, but Dyskinesia sounds like a deconstruction of the sludge metal genre. Oftentimes, there’s the customary post-rocky guitar line, but all of the other instrumentation drones away rather than accompanying the guitarist.
Elsewhere, like on the title track, Dyskinesia engage in lurching drone, but immediately follow it up with a rather dreamy bit of swirling psychedelia; this album is sequenced almost perfectly. What aides and actually harms the album a bit is that Dalla Nascita was recorded live in studio. The benefit is that it gives the album a looser and unpredictable feel, but the recording quality definitely has some pluses minuses. On the album, I like how all the instrumentation reverberates and interacts with each other creating a swirling mix to sift through finding new pieces in each listen or just lose yourself in its vortex. Vocals, which are sung, shouted and screamed, are pushed to the back and used as another textural layer similar to My Bloody Valentine’s shoegaze classic, Loveless. The way these are done is fantastic, but then there’s stuff like how the cymbals are really high in the mix and drown out other sounds. I liked how the album’s not artificially heavy, but it’s a rather thin recording and doesn’t give Dalla the weight it deserves.
Still, I’m not complaining. This album was something I randomly found and downloaded, which rarely leads to a discovery as good as Dalla Nascita is. Definitely check this one out.
Side note: Except for the title track, all of the songs are listed as their track number. I think that’s kind of pretentious, but whatever. There’s also a band called “Tardive Dyskinesia,” so don’t get confused.
-James P.
