Maryland-based dark metal trio DIALOGIA is pleased to unveil latest single, “Conundrum” from their ambitious debut full-length, Nostrum. The stream comes on the eve of the record’s official release.
A staggering, conceptual sonic journey, the ten-track Nostrum unweaves a collection of ciphers, gathering a disparate cast of musicians to urge you to cross the threshold of shadows into the ether. The album entices its listeners to traverse skeletal voids into a world that wails, filled with the seismic shudders of voices that were never meant to be known. These are exotic surroundings, from serene, disembodied soundscape to a vicious percussive maelstrom, from stagnant shadowy waters to the harsh judgment of breathing stone… but they may feel hauntingly familiar to a select few.
Notes vocalist/guitarist/bassist Alejandro Nogales of Nostrum’s latest single, “‘Conundrum’ is without a doubt my proudest accomplishment on the album. It’s very diverse in terms of light and dark and the lyrics deal with a labyrinth in the both physical and metaphorical sense — that concept translated to real life! There are so many different vibes and elements in the song, what with all the choral performances, the fretless bass, layers of acoustic guitars and sound effects and synthesizers, and the riffs themselves: figuring out how to place everything for maximum sonic and emotional impact was a hell of a maze to navigate. Integrating all those colors and elements while still maintaining the dark death metal aura of Nostrum as a whole was the biggest conundrum of them all.”
Stream DIALOGIA’s “Conundrum” at THIS LOCATION.
Nostrum was self-recorded between 2017 and 2019, was mixed by Tymon Kruidenier (ex-Cynic) at TymonSound, and mastered by Brett Caldas-Lima at Tower Studio. The record includes guest appearances by Barre Gambling (Daylight Dies), Bobby Koelble (ex-Death), Guthrie Iddings (ex-Daylight Dies), and many others, and comes swathed in the cover art of Dasha Pliska.
Nostrum will be released digitally on October 2nd. For preorders, visit the official DIALOGIA Bandcamp page at THIS LOCATION where previously released singles “Metalurgia” and “Stratagem” can be streamed.
DIALOGIA was born when childhood friends Alejandro Nogales and Bobby Tufino, who had met while growing up in Bolivia in the 1990s, reconnected after a ten-year silence to find that they shared the same predilection for dread in art, and the same fascination with the worlds that lie beneath the surface of our own. The band’s name, a portmanteau of the concepts “dialogic” and “-logia,” reflects the impulse to make a wholly dark metal record that was not just an extension of the albums that had come before, but that would in turn inform (and transform) the very same divine works that had led to its creation.
The ambition of the demos called for an inhuman drummer: Jasper Barendregt’s extreme drumming with Dodecahedron (and later, Ulsect) proved him to be well-suited for the music’s most relentless moments, but it was his subtle, emotive work on the self-titled Our Oceans album that demonstrated the range of abilities required for the music that would become Nostrum. Masterful guest performances from dark metal luminaries such as Barre Gambling (Daylight Dies) and Bobby Koelble (ex-Death) elevated the songs still further, and the live strings and choral passages performed by musicians recruited from all over the world added an organic authenticity rarely found in a debut album.
“Nostrum features a dose of Dark Metal-era Bethlehem as much as it lands within the Psychotic Waltz realm of prog metal, some curtain of gloom hangs over the chassis of its core movements just enough to keep DIALOGIA from sounding too hopeful or dryly polished. The effect is an intelligence that is difficult to predict, a sensation of an individual who is smart and a bit dangerous for it. It is a very accomplished and well-woven tension to bring into a debut full-length.” – Grizzly Butts
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http://www.dialogia.info
http://dialogia.bandcamp.com
http://www.instagram.com/dialogiaband
