I've found that one of the best vehicles for explaining how I choose what to listen and what to skip is the dichotomy of melody and dissonance. Listeners of metal know that it's not really a dichotomy but you get what I mean. I find myself oscillating in taste between seeking "clean", melodic music and "dirty", abrasive sounds. Currently I am on a melodic kick that has lasted for several months now. I have less patience for anything "raw" and instead seek out bright, chromatic compositions and expansive, colorful palettes. Which is why Dreamer caught my attention so strongly. You could place the project (which includes members of The Zenith Passage and Blighted Eye) in the recent wave of progressive death metal releases which includes Fallujah, Dessiderium, and Dyssidia. Which is to say, they make heavy, complex progressive death metal that nonetheless places a heavy emphasis on melody.
"Regress", the first single from their upcoming debut album Autogenesis, is a fantastic example of this. It's laden with big riffs and, what's more, big riffs that go hard (tune in to four minutes and fifteen seconds for my favorite). The song is heavy and challenging. But it is also passionately multi-chromatic, with harsh and clean vocals, big, colorful sweeps and thick, percussive riffs blending together into a heady mix. It all fits in exceptionally well with the space theme of the album cover and the band's name, creating an aesthetic identity that serves to further amplify the music. And there's a lot of music to amplify; the last element of the sound is that it is uncompromisingly progressive, blending all of the above sounds into a monstrously intricate track clocking in at over nine minutes long.
I've heard the rest of the album and it's all just as good: bright, slightly sweet, but still crushingly heavy at times. If you're looking to scratch that specific itch, then this is a great release to go to. Autogenesis releases on December 11th via Beyond the Top Records. Head on over here to pre-order it.