The Smashing Skull Sessions

The Smashing Skull Sessions is a podcast, interview and review website, set up to showcase and support the underground rock and metal scenes. Our goal is to promote artists and bands from right across the globe, giving them another voice and another forum in which to get their music out to a greater audience. We also have a new review series, The Review Room, which is another unique way of getting bands and artists some extra coverage and promotion

Din Of Celestial Birds -The Night Is For Dreamers

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023 at 5:00 AM #shoegaze #rock #review #psychedelic #post-rock #post-metal #post rock #podcast #musicreviews #musicreview #music #experimental #blackmetal #blackgaze #alternativemetal

As you may know The Smashing Skull Sessions started a new concept recently: The Review Room. On this monthly podcast we discuss and review an array of newly released tracks. It’s on the latest episode of The Review Room where Rich B picked the song Downpour from the band Din of Celestial Birds which introduced us to this post-rock band hailing from Leeds, UK. All were pleasantly surprised to say the least so a written album review, to give the album some more display, was in place. Check out that Review Room episode for furthermore reactions.

Din of Celestial Birds (DoCB) originally started out as a studio project in 2019 with guitarist Andy Gill as founder and solo musician. As the first mouth to mouth reactions we hugely positive, Gill took it to the next level by forming a real band to do live shows. Fast forward and passing by an EP and well received live performances, we’re in the here and now with the release of the debut album The Night is for Dreamers which is made available through A Cheery Wave Records (UK) and A Thousands Arms Music (North America).

DoCB play instrumental cinematic post-rock/metal. With three guitarists and added synths and electronics as well as spoken word samples, you can expect a multi-layered sound. An interesting sound in which one can discover new things with each listen to the album. There’s an excellent eye for details as well as a great balance between dreamy long-stretched post-rock passages and wall-of-sound post-metal outbursts. I love that fantastic transition into those harder riffs in the opener, Utopia for instance. It actually took me a couple of listens to figure out that the song went over seamlessly into the second song Junebug. The finesse in that is typical for the quality on this whole album.

The choice of themes and the sporadic spoken word parts are well-thought as well, and deliver such depth to songs like MMEC (that seems to deal about depression and anxiety) and I Love You But It’s Killing Me (in here there’s only one short spoken line, but it immediately tells a whole story: “Your mother and I are separating…”).

And what about my favorite track Laureate of American Low Life! The title and song are a reference to writer/poet Charles Bukowski, and it was already written in 2021. Just like Bukowski, the song is full of contrasts as it is in daily real life as well. The writer would tell about the misanthropic stuff life has to offer like poverty and alcoholism, but always with an uplifting humoristic touch in it. The song beholds the same contrasts: beautiful gentle flow altered by the heaviest riffs on the album. Combined with interview samples of the man himself this song is another proof of the band’s capability of creating immense layers and depth. Even the artwork seems to be well-thought of and tells a story on its own.

From start to finish this album is just top-notch. What a real pleasant discovery this is and I can honestly say this is one of my favorite post-rock/metal albums this year so far. Every fan of those styles should definitely give this album a solid listening and I’m convinced many will agree with all my praising. Year list material!

https://dinofcelestialbirds.bandcamp.com/album/the-night-is-for-dreamers