Mouth of the Architect

For all ten years of their venerable career, Dayton, OH post-metal band Mouth of the Architect have been seeking a balance between delicate, emotive atmospherics and crushing, sludge-influenced heaviness. Dawning represents their finest effort in this regard, the huge, looping song structures (which gesture towards pioneers in the genre like Neurosis and Isis), filled with moments of fragile intricacy and frail emotiveness, are pitted against the ponderous weight of doom metal structures and laden, psychedelic guitar tones. Dawning sits neatly between their tender 2008 offering (Quietly) and 2006's more aggressive The Ties That Bind, with disarming moments like the opening of "How This Will End" standing in contrast to the rest of that track's towering intensity. A great deal of the fine balance that characterizes Dawning is made possible not only be the finely crafted instrumentation but the perfectly deployed dual vocals of Steve Brooks and Kevin Schindel, who can layer death howls overtop of each other, contrast harsh against clean, or offer moments of naked, crooning vulnerability.