The other day, I got a Facebook message from the Philadelphia band New Dawn Fades. They wanted to share their debut album with me, which was released back in March of this year. I know I must have my ego in check, because I am still astounded by the fact that bands would want to share their music with me, as if somehow my opinion on it is important.
New Dawn Fades – Lores
Release Date: Out Now
Words: Sunil Singh
I am not naive. I know I am a really good writer and wrote a whole book on the underground stoner/doom scene and, I am not sure if I have even plugged my own book here?
Jeff Woods is a Canadian music icon. He has interviewed the likes of Jimmy Page and David Bowie. But, at the end of the day, I am just an obsessive fan of heavy music, which always overrides any potential to start thinking about myself in any other way. Jeff Woods is my inspiration for that. Tons of knowledge and tons of humility.
So, through that lens of musical obsession, I gave this unsolicited album a listen.
First of all, as with my last album review, the debut album by Mothertomb, I loved the album cover. Band name in the upper left-hand corner, single-word album title at the bottom, and the rest of the space just sheer apocalyptic beauty.
While the band’s name comes from the Joy Division song, already giving me cool vibes about the band, my brain went to something far more obscure. Warrior Soul, one of my favourite bands of all time, had a song called Shine Like It on their criminally overlooked album Salutations From The Ghetto Nation, which was released in 1992.
One of the final lyrics is “…the new age begins at dawn.”
How appropriate, as the band feverishly mines everything dark and cool from that decade. And their band name is more than appropriate, as that “new age” that Kory Clarke trumpeted like a clarion call of revolution did not just fade in the ’90s. It literally blew up.
But in the aftermath, it was not only the early days of the stoner/doom scene, but a legacy of alternative/grunge that would need decades to sift through and organically reference.
Enter New Dawn Fades.
A great way to start is by referencing a line from a review by Steve Howe, who writes for Outlaws Of The Sun. “Lores is an absolute high-octane barrage of killer riffs. Listening to it, you’d swear it was a curated ‘GREATEST HITS’ compilation rather than an inaugural record.”
That is exactly how I felt listening to song after song after song. But it is important to dig deep into the alchemy that is going on, because it is easy to reach for that catalogue of greatness and either fall flat or get tagged with being a clone of an era.
The first song, Villains Come To Light, begins with the charm of some high school kids thrashing away in their garage trying to piss off their neighbours. The song quickly settles into a cocktail of Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, already giving hints that the band is capable of taking trippy detours.
Peak 1992 arrives in the next song, Meet Me At Sundown, which has Danzig nods, but still commands the vocal delivery that opened the album.
Just two songs in, there is no surprise where New Dawn Fades find their core influences, but what they do with them is unpredictable. It feels like the band wants to literally push the great music of the ’90s into feeling contemporary and vital.
Souls arrives with familiar doom energy and groove, mixing in some sinister atmosphere. But two minutes into the song, there is this wonderful galloping energy of mid-’70s Sabbath. Everything eventually settles back into the signature dirge/doom that opened this song. There are moments of musical precision, but the song knows itself well, and fuzz wins the day here.
Around this moment, I realise I am feeling a lot of the energy/groove/attitude in this Mindfunk song. It is from their second album Dropped, released in 1993. The title refers to them being dropped by their label Epic prior to recording this album, which has gone on to be one of the cult classics of the ’90s.
The rest of the album carries, unknowingly, the aura of that album. Goddess had more of a spiritual/airy feel. Lores clearly is more earthy/desert sand aplenty. But there is a binding confidence, swagger, and songwriting looseness that connects these two albums, more than 30 years apart.
Almost every band in the scene has some Sabbath influence tattooed into their music. The ’90s were one of the most explosive periods in rock history, with many bands like Warrior Soul and Mindfunk falling through the cracks.
Lores is a scholarly romp through that period, but there is enough modern dust and sand to make the album feel contemporary and complete.
The bar keeps getting raised for debut albums in the scene. New Dawn Fades is another band that has cleared that bar.
Well done, gents.
Lores, by New Dawn Fades, is out now. For more details, visit newdawnfadesforever.com.
