these guys sent me their album ages ago. but due to moving the blog and so on, it never got posted… till now that is! and I must admit I was quite curious to hear what this album was like, due to seeing them name dropped on quite some forums, as well as getting *very* glowing revies. well boys… here’s another one to add to the collection. the intro is a brooding and atmospheric droning glimpse of doom. suddenly it gets abruptly ended in favour of havoc and destruction, and the meaning of the album title gets all too obvious. after raping your ears for some few minutes, Stella Dawes proceed into more ambient drone territory, just to make sure you are in fact going insane, before launching another full scale attack. you know The Battle for Helms Deep in the movie adaption of The Lord of the Rings? it’s kind of like that. only in between these grandiose events, there’s bits of harmonic and genuinely catchy soft alternative bits, offering a healing moment to your ears. Stella Dawes does an excellent job at executing this, which is something that might have been out of place if not done properly. fortunately though, this band proves to be capable of taking many elements which might not look compatible on paper, and putting them together into gigantic master pieces. the progressive and diverse nature of this band makes it somewhat appropriate to draw comparison to another band on that’s punk – The Pax Cecilia. both bands play a screamo-tinged variant of progressive metalcore. the biggest difference might be that where The Pax Cecilia has piano-driven harmonies, Stella Dawes have droning intervals of noise rock that strive to create harmonies and melodic structures underneath all the terror – and succeeds at that, I might add. just like they succeed at pretty much everything they attempt at this album. whether it be brutal metalcore or the sweetest acoustic-driven interludes climaxing in a mix of screams and loud and heavily distorted yet soft on the ears guitars, they simply succeed. this is a bombastic début album full of brave compositions and intricate arrangements that require the utmost skill and devotion to pull of. they pull it off. download this album, then order it from their MySpace. do it now.