“Let my love into your heart. Give it a warm place to die.“
I love it when a band allows their online presence to be 90% serious and 10% goofy. In a move aligning with the latter, New England band Dreamwell jokingly (or begrudgingly) coined “post-skramz” as their genre descriptor. Despite sounding like a lame micro-genre someone like me would invent for a band that would resent it, it fits them surprisingly well: metal-meets-punk music with furious emotional intensity, plus copious atmospherics from post rock alongside the structure and technicality of post hardcore. Their pandemic-released debut Modern Grotesque made a splash in various online forums, and now their second release is coming through Prosthetic Records, granting them the underground metal limelight they deserve.
In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You is a thorough refinement of Dreamwell’s style. Their melodies repeat in ways that could lead to verses and choruses, but the lyrics are more like poetry via stream of consciousness. This gives the songs a lot of depth and encourages close study of the words themselves. It’s absolutely a break-up record that picks at the scabs of failed relationships. Much of the poison in these words is pointed towards the speaker themselves, moving far beyond self-pity as they look in the mirror to see someone wretched and undeserving of love. There are also recurring themes of religion and an unhealthy fixation on hanging as a form of punishment. In short, it’s a poignant and emotionally heavy record, with a vocal performance that absolutely matches this heaviness, from cleans to screams, grunts, and worse.
“Good Reasons to Freeze to Death” starts the record with a continuation of Dreamwell’s highly emotive style. You’ll immediately appreciate the improved mix, led by the bass at the start of this track, with a proper “full band” intro a minute in – flourishing blast beats, screamo vocals, and guitars performing crystal-clear leads and crunchy rhythms. It’s a track that epitomizes everything great about Dreamwell, and immediately takes a victory lap by smoothly transitioning into “Studying the Greats in Self-Immolation”. This track entwines the bright and the brutal, with its glittery instrumental intro that sets a blissful tone, maintained even through its breakdown. Another smooth transition turns into “Lord Have MRSA on My Soul”, similarly pearlescent at first, but the brief cleans curdle into blast beats and fury (“Your God will judge you unclean”). Overall, the start of this record couldn’t be stronger, and it honestly holds this level of quality throughout.
Always a heavy band, Dreamwell are now even heavier. Several songs deliberately lack their usual melodic moments and are all the better for it, giving the band a new dimension to explore. Final single “All Towers Drawn in the Equatorial Room” is Dreamwell at their most slow and shrill, filled front to back with feedback. Later in the record, another heavy single is “Blighttown Type Beat”, somehow danceable through its bouncy lead guitar riffs. But all dancing must end for its breakdown, preceded by the deliciously satisfying lyric “Many have died, they can still speak if you listen, listen, something is rising….” This runs straight into “Body Fountain”, a micro-song brandishing bending leads and panicked vocals. This heavy material has been on their setlist for some time, indicating that this is the aspect they wish to present most boldly, at least in live settings.
Lead single “Obelisk of Hands” is another immediate classic for the band. The instrumental and melodic themes repeat on this track in a way that marks it out as a single, but like all the rest, it’s structurally complex and engrossing. Logan St. Germain (of Anklebiter and Lilac Queen fame) features here with bright and airy vocals, and the band matches them by taking the intensity just slightly back. KZ’s vocals return once again to deliver an emotional gut-punch of an ending: “And I don’t deserve to be with anyone.”
The album packs in some long tracks that offer something truly different to 2021’s Modern Grotesque. They’re still more an exception of Dreamwell‘s rules, but especially important in the context of the album. “It Will Hurt, and You Won’t Get to Be Surprised” is a hurtling adventure, opening with intensity that you’d think couldn’t be matched, and yet the track goes on to defeat itself again and again. A brief moment without distortion demonstrates the band’s newfound talents in writing compelling and melodically complex lines, from front to back-line: both guitars, bass, drums and clean vocals all work apart, yet unified. The lead guitar directs the track, stuck in constant three-note arpeggios, until the urgency deepens and the entire atmosphere becomes desperate and furious and only tremolo picking will do. KZ’s vocals somehow become more urgent, a breakdown unto themselves: “From now on I’ll only have faith in blind misery“; “Never again confess love, next time I’ll bite through my tongue.” It’s goosebump inducing, and track’s outro is absolutely abyssal: “Let my love into your heart / Give it a warm place to die,” screamed over and over above a slowing breakdown that ebbs to cold drone. It’s truly the emotional climax of the record, as well as being Dreamwell’s masterpiece. The subsequent ambient-instrumental (“Reverberations of a Sickly Wound”) is well earned.
The record ends with another two long tracks that invert Dreamwell’s typical songwriting approach. It might take a few listens to get used to how different they come across. Shaped from an acoustic track presented to the band by vocalist KZ, “I Dream’t of a Room of Clouds” is a slow tempo waltz towards atmospheric heights. The vocals are clean but still classically twisted. Closer “Rue de Noms (Could Have Been Better, Should Have Been More)” opens with bass-tapping verses that open feeling amorphous and tense. A certain inevitably grows within the track, unleashing at the four-minute mark, where a blackgaze segment develops into classic Dreamwell emotive-skramz. This hurtles upwards whilst the lyrics find a cruel conclusions: “And I know it’s pathetic how my much of my happiness hinges on the thought of being loved.” It ends with a sadistic breakdown, dropping the album title amongst the shrapnel.
Modern Grotesque was a brilliant start for Dreamwell that has now been thoroughly eclipsed. In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You is an essential release for all fans of screamo and associated genres, and is perhaps the best record I’ve heard in a strong year. The heartbreak charged nature, and the gut-punching lyricism, make for a listen that bends and ruptures the emotions unlike anything recently. After putting together such an exceptional record, the UK can only hope to host this band in the near future.
10/10
Dreamwell’s new album releases October 20th through Prosthetic Records, and you can pre-order it here.