There is certainly a red thread going on here: 20 Buck Spin‘s last record of 2021 was Dream Unending‘s wonderful Tides Turn Eternal. 20 Buck Spin‘s last record of 2022 was WORM‘s amazing Blue Nothing EP. 20 Buck Spin‘s last record of 2023 was Dream Unending teaming up with WORM for a powerful split record named Starpath and my god, if they do a real collaboration for the end of 2024 – I think that record might be one of the very highlights of the year. Listen to this record here to get what I mean!
To clarify one thing, this is not the first time, both bands are featured on the same release as they both appeared on Zero Tolerance magazine‘s 2021 compilation number 103. But many things have changed for these two bands who feature another commonality in the sense that the members are spread across the two countries on the North American continent, which of course makes a normal band life quite impossible but maybe that is also the appeal of it?
Dream Unending opens the record with two new tracks and they surely lead the way for the things to come from the duo of Justin DeTore and Derrick Vella. The basis is clearly Funeral Doom but now we should think of something like Kraut Doom. There are structures in these tracks, yes, but their main trademark is the meandering and often changing nature of the songs. Often you will find two or more melodies that basically run counter to each other, that seem to explode in certain points (for example the beginning of the opener ”So Many Chances”) and then flow away from each other, only to get together in certain moments and move away again. Sometimes there is only one audible line with the others receding, like the highly psychedelic guitar line that slowly pushes forward after the beginning of the track and is the sole survivor for a few moments… that is like a highly atmospheric, proggish element and much more than a simple guitar solo, because it has a totally different purpose in that track other than just showing off musical skills.
Worm’s three tracks add up to nearly 22 minutes (the same length as Dream Unending’s two songs) and they show the same kind of synth-ladden Gothic Black Metal – and as I already said in my review of their last EP Bluenothing the quartet surely knows how to bend their music in one direction or another. Last time, it was a lot of Prog Rock influences, this time is more the kind of Synth-driven metal we also hear Master’s Murmur, the latest output by Yellow Eyes. So we might argue that these three songs are less Tomb Mold and more Blut Aus Nord. Clearly Black Metal with a lot of Death Metal influences but also with that little twist of Dungeon Synth interspersed here to make the whole thing even more enjoyable. A track like ”Midwinter Tears” also shows that they surely know their Gothic-period Paradise Lost with a lot more clean guitar lines than one would imagine them to feature. The highly variable vocals also purvey the idea of “Vampiric Black Metal” as they themselves call their music. Haunting it surely is, also because of the small little undertones.
Starpath shows two bands which act like star-crossed lovers and who work together so well, one wishes for them to write some songs together. And publish them as the last record on 20 Buck Spin at the end of 2024! Please make this happen!
