Deepshade – Gloaming

By RingMaster Review on May 13, 2022 • ( 0 )

As in any year there is always a clutch of releases which really get their hooks deep into our passions and among those burrowing deep in 2015 was the debut album from UK rockers DEEPSHADE.

Everything Popular Is Wrong was a stunning affair offering bold incitement track after track and getting under the skin and into the imagination like few others that year and it still makes regular appearances on our listening for sheer pleasure moments. As firmly enjoyable as it certainly was, its 2020 successor, Soul Divider, did not ignite the same fires within though it proved a rich pleasurer for a great many others. So it was with inherent anticipation and certain intrigue that we lined up the band’s new EP, Gloaming….

DEEPSHADE has bred and woven a sound which flames with real individuality, the trio of vocalist/guitarist David Rybka, bassist Thomas Doherty and drummer Adam Owens weaving webs and tapestries of imagination stoking adventure whilst embracing the rich essences of psych rock, grunge, stoner rock and classic rock. As those earlier releases proved, it makes for a proposition which commands attention with its craft and adventure of individuality; the imagining of a merger of The Doors, Soundgarden and Queens Of The Stone Age with extra enterprise from a Devils Teeth or Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster a potent clue.

Gloaming is the band’s most adventurous indeed experimental offering yet, a greater fusion of styles shaping its imagination and fiercer energy its character yet the flames of beauty and swirls of atypical psych temptation still flourish and burn bright. It is in rich evidence through EP opening Eat My Dust, a song seeing drummer Paul Barlow and saxophonist Christian Berg guesting, both repeating their appearance on its successor. Swiftly rhythms, riffs and grooves gather their lures and forge a front of temptation, a heady tempest of sound as virulently contagious as it is imposingly predacious. Quickly flumes of greater variety caught the imagination, rays of varied flavours and Berg’s great fiery sax squalls sparking a range of seductions. With rhythms boldly swung and eagerly biting there was no escaping its manipulations especially once a jazz breeze and Avant- kilned invention erupted in the song’s relative calms.

The track is glorious, an imagination firing incitement which the following Mountain feeds off and matches with its mystique hued, tension wound contemplation. Openly inspired by the past two years, it’s a worldly yet intimated evocation of psychedelic beauty and heavy rock dilemma, and just as fascinating, gripping and addictive as its predecessor.

The band’s new single is next up, Life Is Beauty embracing the keys of Francis Lydiatt within its mystical suggestion and punk rock fired uproar. Light and dark, seduction and volatility clash and align within its mercurial landscape, unpredictability soaking every aspect as too viral catchiness and expectation defusing invention.

The Wolf lives up to its lupine name from its first breath; the track predatory yet cunningly and alluringly moving with every twist and turn. Barlow again carries rapacious want in every rhythm landed with Doherty’s bass snarling with matching feral instinct. As in every track, Rybka’s voice is magnetic and attention fuelling as the pyres and seductions of sound around him, a prowess and energy as dynamic in his guitar’s exploits and machinations.

The EP’s title track closes things out, the song glowing and glistening as shadows prowl its depths and outskirts. Within its sombre yet enlivening light, sounds scuttle and scurry, the intimation set by every note and imagination woven moment keen across its epic landscape. Like the final moment of safety and beauty before the lights go out but equally reassurance of greater and brighter things ahead, the song is an absorbing end to a thrilling offering.

Fair to say, DEEPSHADE have set our fires burning once more.

Gloaming is released May 13^th; available @ https://deepshadehq.bandcamp.com/album/gloaming-ep-2022