Like moths to the flame, or prey drawn to the deadly glow of anglerfish deep on the ocean floor, Dawn Of Ouroboros feel an irresistible compulsion to seek out the glimmer even in the deepest gloom. Blackened death metal doesn’t often accommodate warmth or melody. But there it was, drawing listeners in on beguiling 2023 breakthrough Velvet Incandescence, and here it is again on blistering follow-up Bioluminescence.
The Californian quartet understand a ‘progressive’ approach doesn’t need to mean coldness and rigidity. Keystone guitarist Tony Thomas is a molecular biologist, and his fascination with organic growth and evolution pulsates through each of these eight tracks.
As with the Ouroboros itself – the ancient symbol of the snake eating its own tail – it is hard to know where to begin. The five-minute title-track is as good a distillation as it’s possible to get, dropping listeners straight into a hail of frostbitten riffs, before jackknifing into glassy melodic vocals and ricocheting into a passage of brutish bombast. And that’s just the first 85 seconds.
Crucially, each idea feels properly realised, illuminated in sunny golds, sea blues and blood reds. Nebulae explodes into more technical, blastbeaten territory. But then Slipping Burgundy pulls another bamboozling about-turn: sprawling from a slow, jazzy intro to a full-on symphonic black metal onslaught.