Tag: 夢遊病者

Playlists

(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 31: Best of 2024: The Metal List

Last First playlist of the year is all metal. On Thursday Friday I released my Nine Circles Honorable Mentions Best Of List, and it’s a beast: 25 albums that moved and rocked me in some way. So similar to last week’s (Un)Focused Definition this is going to focus on those albums with the final, “official” best of metal list coming in the first year of January, and then my “all-in” playlist accompanying the year-end round up post here, sometime in mid-January. Okay, enough strikethroughs: even though we all know the tune by now about rankings as I listened back to this year’s playlist I was really, really happy. I love these albums. We’re already back to the 70s and prog/rock in the main albums reviews, but for one more week, let’s get heavy. Grab that denim vest, don those spikes, and let’s listen to some killer metal that came out in 2024.

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Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum
Vinyl

夢遊病者 – Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum (2024)

Any new release from 夢遊病者 (again, loosely translated to Sleepwalker) is cause for celebration, simply because at this point in the band’s career you have no idea what you’re going to get. Is it going to be the frenzied noise expedition on earlier albums like 5772 or 一​期​一​会? Perhaps the more ambient (though no less harrowing) and enveloping grace of last year’s Skopofoboexoskelett? The answer is, of course, “none of the above”. Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum is a sprawling, global-encompassing exploration of various genres and styles that attempt to channel the whole of human experience into an album both heart-breakingly lovely and crushing in its accusation. Multiple listens yield new secrets and interpretations, and like all of the band’s previous work it lingers long after the air is silent.

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album art for 夢遊病者- skopofoboexoskelett
Vinyl

夢遊病者 – Skopofoboexoskelett (2023)

I’ve never been known as the “noise guy” – give me a solid rockin’ foundation any day of the week. Hell, give me odd syncopations and un-common time signatures and I’ll make a meal of it. Give me a cacophony of colliding sounds and I’m not sure what to make of it. So why the draw to a band like 夢遊病者, loosely translated to Sleepwalker, who not only pushes the extent of noise and extreme metal but excels in making the kind of sonic collage whose very intent is to put you ill at ease? I have no idea, but since first hearing their 2016 release 5772 (on cassette, no less) I was taken. Skopofoboexoskelett is the band’s latest EP, and it continues the trend of using black metal as a springboard to jarring, emotive auditory nightmares. If I’m being overly flamboyant with my language, that’s because I’m still wrestling with how to even describe what I’m hearing.

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