Dahuz - Cineres Mundi - review
Dahuz - Cineres Mundi - review
Tracklist
01. Sol Invictus02. Phaeton
03. Hyperion
04. Apollo
05. Icarus
A review by
musclassia June 19, 2025
Coming six years after their self-titled debut EP, Cineres Mundi is the first full-length album from Dahuz, and their first release as a four-piece following the recent addition of guitarist and backing vocalist Guillaume Chomienne. The group’s music to date has been described by themselves and others as a mix of stoner, doom and prog metal, and listening to Cineres Mundi supports those claims, but it doesn’t quite tell the full story. When I reviewed Spaceslug’s Memorial back in 2021, I noted the surprising creep of post-metal, particularly in the vein of Amenra, into multiple songs on the album, and Dahuz have served up a reasonable dollop of post-metal on top of the rest of this debut album.
The album’s tracklist is arranged in length order, with the shortest songs at the beginning and the longest at the end (although the opening pair have only 15 seconds’ difference between them), to try and gradually lure you deeper and deeper under the album’s spell. At its onset, Cineres Mundi very much continues the stoner doom legacy established by the band’s previous work, with classic slow, fuzzy riffs in the style alongside hazy harmonized vocals (plus a few growls). Around the halfway mark in the song, however, the lighter instrumentation goes for the first time towards the ‘melancholic stoner doom’ that Spaceslug has become so associated with, and the melodic motifs and evolving textures of the song’s midsection exhibit the first hints of post-metal influences.
All of these references to those two sources thus far are not to say that the album as a whole is overly indebted to Spaceslug, nor that post-metal is the primary genre. Stoner doom is above anything else the defining sound of Cineres Mundi, and the softer sections in several cases are merely leaning more towards spacious psychedelia. That said, there’s something about the instrumental textures in “Phaeton” that really evokes Cult Of Luna circa Somewhere Along The Highway, at least until the sound gets thicker, slower and doomier in the closing minutes.
To justify the Spaceslug references, one only has to look towards the latter three tracks on the album; whether it be the chords, solos and jamming nature of the second half of “Hyperion”, or the sad clean tonality of the opening minutes to “Apollo”, the resemblance is hard to overlook for someone well acquainted with the Polish band. That said, Dahuz bring plenty of their own personality to this album, not least in how extensively they explore on these lengthy closing trio of songs, which between them span close to 50 minutes. Naturally, each of them is a slow burner; “Hyperion” takes several minutes to evolve from spacious clean chords and guitar leads and get into something more riffy, and it subsequently ebbs and flows between crunching stoner doom heaviness and calmer meandering.
If something holds me back from enjoying this album quite as much as the underlying formula should warrant, it’s that the songs are perhaps a bit too long, and a bit too meandering; there are moments particularly in “Apollo” and “Icarus” in which I find myself losing my attention while listening. That said, in between those less engaging passages are some really top moments; “Apollo” makes great use out of guest female vocals to build the emotive vibe of the beginning, while later on there’s really solid psychedelic grooves and an unexpectedly pacey surge of percussive intensity around the 9-minute mark. Closing track “Icarus” has a hint of Amenra to the muted guitar tones and French spoken word in its opening, but while it reaches the peaks of extremity across the record with some of its growls and distortion, it really sways me with a wonderfully melancholic melodic vibe around 11 minutes in, and a bluesy groove a couple of minutes afterwards.
They might not quite be strong enough songwriters yet to keep one’s attention throughout the entirety of their extended wanderings, but Dahuz have struck upon something very interesting by combining a couple of fruitful influences and offering a fairly fresh take on an all-too-frequently repetitive and mundane subgenre.
Written on 19.06.2025 by
Written on 19.06.2025 by
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