DWELLNOUGHT – Monolith of Ephemerality

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7.0

• Bands:
  DWELLNOUGHT
• Duration: 00:46:55
• Available from: 02/20/2026
• Label:

• Caligari Records

Streaming not yet available

With “Monolith of Ephemerality”, the Italians Dwellnought bring to the table a debut that is in no hurry to please or simplify its language. It is a record that requires time, immersion and a certain willingness to accept changing forms, sometimes irregular, but consistent with the underlying idea: to build a sound monolith destined, paradoxically, to crumble under its own weight. The title is therefore anything but ornamental and effectively introduces a first long-distance work that thrives on contrasts, tensions and abrupt metamorphoses.

The band from Varese moves in an equidistant border area between black metal and more deviant death-doom, carefully avoiding overly codified solutions. The basis is often that of an oppressive and earthy sound, almost 'rustic' in its pace, onto which black flows and sudden more environmental drifts are grafted, used not as a simple outline, but as a real narrative tool. The mood is ritualistic, dark, enveloping, and finds in drumming – often reduced to a tribal, insistent, hypnotic pulsation – one of its main expressive vehicles. In this sense, the reference to the latest Fuoco Fauo is legitimate, especially for that sense of dark liturgy and for the use of time as a structural element, but Dwellnought also try to break the static with sudden lashes and more direct assaults, attributable to a more 'earthly' and less contemplative idea of ​​black-death metal. In this sense, names like Temple Nightside or Malthusian help to outline the type of sonic magma that the band tries to concoct: dense, suffocating, but crossed by constantly moving underground currents.

The highlight of the album is undoubtedly the long suite “The Final Desire Is Unbeing”, which functions as a synthesis of the main elements of the proposal. Here there is space for both the ritual and dilated component and a melodic veil which, especially towards the middle of the piece, grants unexpected holds to the listener without compromising the oppressive aura of the whole. It is also the moment in which the idea of ​​ephemerality evoked by the band takes sonic shape, with passages that seem to promise stability and then slowly dissolve.

There is a lot of irons in the fire and, here and there, a thread of inexperience still emerges, especially in some slightly harsh transitions that betray a balance that is not always perfectly assimilated. Sometimes the different souls of the group seem more combined than merged, but the direction is clear and the material is there. “Monolith of Ephemerality” is an immersive, massive and overall interesting debut: not a definitive work, but a solid and ambitious first step towards a sonic identity that deserves attention.