“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in a poem that no one quoting it has ever finished reading. And while Eliot was quite metal in his exquisite, existential despair about WWI or whatever, he never understood true existential dread. I speak, of course, of the dread of being force-fed twenty-five promising albums, half of which are drenched in so much reverb that you feel like you’re swimming, only to realize that you didn’t even review the Record o’ the Month yourself
“Though often yoked to the tech death scene, I’ve never found Dormant Ordeal particularly technical. Or at least not in the way bands like Defeated Sanity, Archspire, or Gorod are considered technical. Why is this important? Because on Tooth and Nail, their fourth outing and first for new label Willowtip, we see Dormant Ordeal step further away from any vestiges of technicality. Factor in too that, since the release of We Had It Coming, Dormant Ordeal continues to shrink—the most recent departure being that of drummer and founding member Radek Kowal—and you have an ordeal ripe for drama. Dormant Ordeal has, however, always managed high levels of quality output.” Don Dokken vs Dormant Ordeal.
