Band:	Dawn Of Ouroboros
Album:	Velvet Incandescence
Style:	Atmospheric black metal, Progressive black metal
Release date:	April 2023

01. Healing Grounds
02. Testudines
03. Iron Whispers
04. Levitating Pacifics
05. Rise From Disillusion
06. Castigation
07. Cephalopodic Void
08. Velvet Moon

Dawn Of Ouroboros announced themselves as an act unbeholden to any one style in particular on their 2020 debut, The Art Of Morphology, a record that incorporated both elements of death and black into an unpredictable progressive metal framework. With Velvet Incandescence, they show no signs of regressing to a template.

One reason why Dawn Of Ouroboros may feel comfortable being so ambitious with their writing is due to the comprising musicians’ affinity with one another; with the exception of bassist David Scanlon, each member is part of at least one other project with another member, whether it be Botanist, Cailleach Calling, Among The Torrent or Red Rot. That member roster has changed since The Art Of Morphology, with a second guitarist added to the mix in Ian Baker; with the addition of another guitar, the guitarwork in Dawn Of Ouroboros has become the band’s greatest strength even more so than on the debut.

Pretty much every song is peppered with guitar solos, or lead guitar riffs and motifs, with multiple solos within just the first song, “Healing Grounds”. These solos are reliably exciting, often featured on top of frenetic blast beat-driven passages, such as near the end of “Healing Grounds” or midway into “Cephalopodic Void”, the latter almost having a Fallujah-esque feel to it. However, the solos work equally well in slower sections, and even in sections that start more restrained but then build in intensity, like in “Rise From Disillusion”. When not straight-up soloing, the lead guitars also offer effective hooks, such as again in “Rise From Disillusion”, lighting up a more measured groovy passage after a blast-heavy introduction. The culmination of the guitarwork in general comes in closing track “Velvet Moon”, a beautifully sad-yet-melodic song with a vibe I’m inclined to compare with that of the iconic ending of Between The Buried And Me’s “Selkies: The Endless Obsession”; with the shrieks, textured tremolos, hooks and solos, this track feels like a blackgaze “Selkies”, and makes for a great conclusion to the album.

As far as the rest of the album is concerned outside of the lead guitars, is Velvet Incandescence as stylistically bold as its predecessor? The ‘prog with death and black’ still somewhat applies, although, as on the debut, the ‘black’ being represented is more so atmo-black or blackgaze than anything more traditional. I don’t even know if blackgaze is necessarily the right description sometimes; the band basically have frequent sections of blasting, shrieks and tremoloing, not really with the tone of blackgaze, but not with the riffing power of more conventional black metal.

The other end of the extreme spectrum is still represented too, albeit slightly less frequently; after a softer introduction that feels something like a mix of Dreadnought’s jazzier bits and blackgaze, “Healing Grounds” moves into tremolo-heavy prog-death, with a sound not too far from what Kardashev were doing at times on Liminal Rite. Later in the record, “Castigation” and “Cephalopodic Void” return to sounds more associated with prog death and tech-death, with pummelling lower-end riffs (almost bordering on djent at times in “Castigation”) and growls. There are further musical surprises on top of these, however, most notably with “Iron Whispers”, which kicks off with a mellow psychedelic jam that could appear on a Weedpecker song before evolving into something closer to sludge than any other genre I can think of, albeit with perhaps more of a post-metal vibe with its use of cleaner guitar tones and vocals.

There’s certainly plenty of variety here; I must confess, there’s also a smidge of variety in the songwriting quality, or at least my enjoyment here. I’ve probably already indicated which songs work best for me here, but it’s that sludginess of “Iron Whispers”, the melancholia of “Velvet Moon”, the emphatic darkness of “Castigation”, and the solid range of “Healing Grounds” that I’m most taken with here. As far as areas of the album that I’m less keen on, I do think there’s perhaps an over-reliance on blast-beating across Velvet Incandescence. “Levitating Pacifics” starts off with a soft introduction that doesn’t really go anywhere, and then awkwardly transitions into a metallic song that feels disconnected to it; from here, there’s a relentless onslaught of blasting for multiple minutes on end, and then once this song finished, “Rise From Disillusion” immediately kicks off with blasting. It’s not that I dislike blasting, but these sections typically don’t have much else going for them musically, with unmemorable tremolo sequences without hooks. In contrast, when “Castigation” moves from its initial slower, groovier riffing into a blasting passage about a minute in, it has so much more emphasis, partly due to how well it’s built towards, but also due to how much more emotion I pick up in the guitar layers accompanying the shrieks and percussion.

Beyond the blasts, most of my other minor gripes come with songwriting that’s either unmemorable or disjointed. I mentioned in the last paragraph that “Levitating Pacifics” seemed to contain two sections that didn’t belong together; I also found parts of “Rise From Disillusion” and “Cephalopodic Void” to be a bit unsatisfying. The former suddenly cuts away from ballistic violence at the 3-minute mark for a gazey passage that offers relatively little, while the latter seems to struggle a bit with its tone, with certain passages internally fluctuating between darker vibes or lighter melody in a way that feels inconsistent rather than complex. One last point to mention is the vocals; Chelsea Rocha-Murphy has solid shrieks and growls in her arsenal, and the more full-blooded clean vocals also work well for me, but whether it’s due to the actual performance or just the phrases they’re saddled with, I don’t enjoy the softer cleans so much, nor am I particularly fond of the shouted and spoken word-style bits in “Testudines” and “Levitating Pacifics”.

Velvet Incandescence arguably exhibits upsides and downsides to its variety; I would hesitate to label it an example of a ‘jack of all trades’ record, but it does perhaps have both a lack of really standout songs and moments (bar perhaps “Velvet Moon”), and also some issues with consistency. Nevertheless, it has a distinctive identity and brings a good amount of satisfaction, particularly courtesy of the lead guitars.