Mouth Of The Architect: Dawning

Weighty post-metallers draw up a new set of plans

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Saying you’re an ‘atmospheric sludge’ band is a convoluted way of saying you sound like early Pelican with a Southern rock twist, and up until this point that description rang true for Mouth Of The Architect.

Whilst 2010’s The Violence Beneath EP hinted at a band moving away from such easy classification it’s only now that they’ve realised the ambition lurking underneath the EP’s formulaic construction.

Where previously the band crafted twisted dirges of bruised psychedelia, Dawning is a more subtle beast. Openers Lullaby and It Swarms harness a tribal battery, yet it’s the 11-and-a- half-minute How This Will End, cloaked in epic-to-gentle-to-explosive dynamics and off-kilter timings reminiscent of These Arms Are Snakes and Intronaut, that provides Dawning’s most illuminating moment.