Dreamless — All this Sorrow, All these Knives

Here’s six long tracks of droning noise rock, packaged with the usual care by Handmade Birds. The shortest piece measures seven and a half minutes long; the lengthiest, eleven and a half - and songs tend to finish as they started.

Thus, the order of the day is pummelling repetition: shoegazing dream pop gone ugly and “rock”. To put it more succinctly, Dreamless follow in the wake of Mr. Justin Broadrick’s pioneering efforts. I can’t confess to having heard a lot of Jesu (Broadrick’s post-Godflesh project), but what I have heard has resonances with “All this Sorrow, All these Knives”. Regardless of Jesu, though, you can hear enough Godflesh in Dreamless to be able to acknowledge Broadrick’s influence. Not that this is a criticism, as such - and certainly Dreamless aren’t the only band to chart trajectories from such a starting point - but you can hear the same monstrous bass lines, melancholy rhythms and vocals - which range from “tired” to “near death”.

The use of reverb on the guitar for lead parts is reminiscent of another Broadrick trait; but where he has displayed an interest in technology, and the use of electronics and processing in music, throughout his works, Dreamless is a more resolutely “rock” affair. For all the fearsome noise that Godflesh/Jesu have produced, there has also been a truly pristine element to their sound. Processed layers of instruments and sounds, meticulously arranged and played; without a note out of place - no “noise”, in a sense. The songs on “All this Sorrow…” are much noisier in every aspect: its not ramshackle at all, but its more “rock” leanings forgive “extraneous” guitar noises, rushed fade-outs, the odd flailing note… The actual production itself is really very noisy at times; “Dreams  Of Chloe”, the first track, is a squall of noise - the guitars threatening to smother all other elements.

“All this Sorrow, All these Knives” is not as derivative as I’m possibly making it out to be. During freer, instrumental sections, a more “indie” sensibility is sometimes revealed; with guitar work more akin to Dinosaur Jr., for example. Rather surprisingly, the last track, “Drown My Soul”, is an uptempo charge which has echoes of grunge; or at least that “era”. Its an odd conclusion to the album. Saying all this, the penultimate song, “Nothing Irreparable Has Happened Here”, does indeed seem like an explicit homage to the sludgy marches of Godflesh. Its also the only real point at which Dreamless experiment, with the track exploding after the six-minute mark - disintegrating into a maelstrom of drums and feedback, before becoming a blurring drone.

 I can’t say that anything on “All this Sorrow, All these Knives” really excited me; but if expansive, noisy shoegaze - with an essentially metal context - is your chosen joy, you may wish to take a chance on this.