Mountaineer - Dawn and All That Follows

Angry Metal Guy

The legendary Huck n Roll having sadly departed these pages, it falls to me to pick up the Mountaineer reviewing baton, as the Oakland, California sextet stick to their two-yearly release cycle, returning with Dawn and All That Follows. Across his three reviews (3.5-3.0-3.5), Mountaineer clearly struck a chord with olde man Huck, their brand of reflective, shoegaze-y post-metal / -doom conjuring atmospheres and moods that tickled his fancies. The ‘low’ point in the Californians’ AMG journey being the 3.0/5.0¹ awarded to 2020’s Bloodletting. Having failed, if I may be so bold, to diagnose exactly why this record didn’t quite live up to the strengths of its predecessor, Huck correctly—in my humble opinion—alighted on the issue with Bloodletting in his musings on the successor, 2022’s Giving Up the Ghost: it was too damn long!

This gives me pause as I dive into the band’s fifth full-length, Dawn and All That Follows, which nudges very close to Bloodletting’s runtime. The band’s line-up has remained remarkably stable, something that comes through in their sound. From the initial plucked notes and husky clean vocals from Miguel Meza on opener “Cradlesong,” they are almost instantly identifiable as Mountaineer. However, where previous efforts were packed with exhausted Neurosis-esque melancholy (Passages) or a bleak sense of loss (Bloodletting), Dawn …’s defining emotion is one of whimsical dreaminess, which the striking cover art captures excellently. Both The Smashing Pumpkins and Baroness are cited as reference points for this album, but to place this record in those bands’ discogs, we would be looking to Machina/The Machines of God and Yellow & Green (with a greater emphasis, sadly, on Green), respectively.

Dawn and All That Follows by Mountaineer

Hints of Mountaineer’s sludgy, post-hardcore roots remain (most notably on the title track), but much of the cathartic energy of their earlier work is gone, while Meza’s harsh, post-metal roars have also largely disappeared (again, the title track, and fleeting passages of “Dark Passenger” and “Testimonial” apart). Instead, the dominant mood is one of floating through slowly shifting soundscapes. Though rugged, the terrain has suffered from serious erosion and is decidedly hilly, rather than mountainous, with the glorious peaks (like Bloodletting’s “South to Infinity”) mostly absent. Throughout Dawn …, you will find yourself bathed in walls of reverb-heavy, post-metal chords and rough, blues-laden melodies, while Meza’s clean vocals swirl and soar. The title track, the record’s longest cut, features all these elements but also showcases what previously defined Mountaineer, as the riffs become a landslide and Meza’s harsh vox cause avalanches.

As before, Meza is Mountaineer’s greatest asset, and make no mistake, his cleans are strong, with a keening edge that conveys a real sense of emotion. However, they aren’t quite striking enough to carry a record of this length, without the offset and texture added by his harsher side, which is used sparingly. Similarly, the guitars have reverted to what we saw on Bloodletting, where the addition of two extra guitarists (as against 2018’s Passages, recorded as a quartet), was not obvious in the sound laid down. Having escaped that trap on Giving Up the Ghost, where the trio were more clearly separable, Dawn … represents something of a regression. Not across the board, with the likes of “Parallels” making good use of the 18 strings available in its bending, downbeat rhythms but in general the evenness of the material here is its Achilles heel. Staying true to the loud, slightly crushed mix that was a feature of the past three records, also does Dawn … few favours. That sound worked fine when Mountaineer’s post-rock sensibilities sat alongside their sludgier roots, but here it lessens the impact of what is a more delicate work overall.

My first foray into Mountaineering (as a reviewer, but not as a fan) is a slightly disappointing one, if I’m honest. Closest in tone to the last outing, Giving Up the Ghost, but with nearly 20 minutes more material, Dawn and All That Follows creaks under its own weight. Where Bloodletting was a slightly uneven affair, this album is more cohesively written than that earlier record, which it almost matches in runtime, but it lacks any real standout moments. Where the likes of “South of Infinity” punctuated and lifted Bloodletting, the only track that achieves that here, is the title track. Luckily, that does land around the halfway mark, giving a much-needed injection of energy, but Mountaineer has over-indulged one side of their sound, at the expense of what previously made them so captivating. I’m afraid that, for large parts of this album, I find myself drifting off, rather than carried away.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Labels: A Thousand Arms Music (US) and Dunk!records (EU)
Websites: mountaineerlfr.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mountaineer
Releases Worldwide: July 26th, 2024

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