Ages is the most recent album that features on this list. It’s beaten a lot of great acts and a lot of albums that have been important to me over the years, but it’s really worth it.
I discovered Dawnwalker back in 2018 and fell pretty hard for their album Human Ruins. I was then a bit weirded out to discover that I knew the main songwriter from the Drowned in Sound forum that I post on. This has gotten even weirder over the years as Dawnwalker have become one of my favourite bands. Now I know Mark (the main band leader) from various gigs we’ve been to, so it feels kind of embarrassing that his band keeps getting gushing reviews in my blog. Well, I gave his newest album my album of the month on October’s blog and now this post is going up, sooooo….
Ah well, Dawnwalker are a great band and more people need to listen to them. So, my social awkwardness be damned, let’s talk about Ages.
So the band describe this album as blackened, folk, prog, post metal. So right from the start you know there is a lot going on here. And to be honest, I bounced off it on my first few listens. Ages is an epic album, four of the songs are over 10 minutes, so there’s a lot to try and wrap your head around, but that wasn’t what was causing me problems.
It was the black metal.
Their previous album, Human Ruins has a black metal element to it, mainly the vocals, and that was challenging for me to get into, but Ages has full on blastbeats and shrieking. And, on my first few listens, it was too much for me. Even though it was a bit full on for my tastes, there was something about it that kept drawing me back. I’m not sure what that was, but Ages is a concept album (remember the prog description?) about the death of a world and I guess it’s this apocalyptic feeling that struck a chord with me as we were heading into the second year of COVID.
Ages was released in December 2020, and like most people, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I would go on my lockdown walks, usually somewhere between 4 and 6 km a day, so Ages felt like a fitting soundtrack, walking along the river and down empty streets, as it felt like our world too might end.
The art work is done by Ted Nasmith, the man famous for his work on Tolkin’s books. I read an interview where Mark Norgate tells the story of seeing the first draft of the album cover and having to tell the artist that he was going for the wrong feeling. He drew competent looking wizards. That’s not what’s going on with this album. This is the End and the wizards on the album cover aren’t going to be able to stop it. As I said. Very fitting for 2020.
Musically, this is such a vast album that it’s hard to offer the cliff notes for. For every punishing metal passage the record has, there’s a beautiful slower passage offsetting it. However the shining star in the songwriting is the lack of repetition on such a long record. A lot of post metal bands like to drag a riff out but Dawnwalker keeps their songs evolving, moving forward with the story and never gets boring.
The Wheel is one of my favourite songs of all time. The first four minutes follow the same mood as Human Ruins, the band’s previous album, but then it kicks off into a full on blackened assault that just raises the intensity to levels the band have never come close to before. At the seven minute mark, the song moves into its most melodic phase and the vocalist sings
“The wind will howl and the bough will break,
I heard the screaming of the earth’s tectonic plates”
And then the song lurches into another assault to close. It’s an incredible way to kick off an album. It lets you know from the outset the investment it’s asking but lets you know it’s going to be worth it.
So there we have it, Ages is the newest album on this list, possibly the least accessible to the casual listener and even a lot of metal fans, but it really is worth your time.*
As it stands, for me Ages is peak Dawnwalker in what is a pretty outstanding discography. More people should be listening to them.
Dawnwalker aren’t on Spotify, but are on all other streaming platforms.
https://dawnwalker.bandcamp.com/album/ages
*If you think Ages sounds interesting but all the blackened hollering and long songs sound too much, check out House of Sand, their album after this. It’s still a great album, but has shorter songs and no screaming.
The ways of exile 