This time of the year, the evening often rivals mid-summer for the best skies of the year, as everything is awash in oranges and purples and horizons zipped with light. It’s a time that, depending on your mood, can invigorate you with warm feelings despite the temperatures or can be a great visual in which to stare as you wrestler with despair and pain.

If you’re in the mood to soak up the darkness, you won’t find a better place than Dream Unending’s strong debut record “Tide Turns Eternal” that mixes so many elements of heaviness that it’s hard to climb out unscathed from the experience afterward. The unexpected union of two death metal powers in Tomb Mold’s Justin Detore (drums and vocals) and Innumerable Forms’ Derrick Vella (guitars and fretless bass) turned into something altogether different, a band that has some death metal senses for sure but delves even deeper into murky waters, doom majesty, and dripping coldness, making it feel like you’re on out in the elements on one of those aforementioned autumn nights, shivering and coming to terms with what ails you emotionally. It’s dreary and punishing, something that’s a product of a strange dream that refuses to relent its grip even after you’ve awakened.

“Entrance” takes the first steps, a quick intro cut that is gloomy and strange, setting the proper aura that gets under way on “Adorned in Lies” that bathes in clean streams before growls reach out, and the fog obscures your vision. An unsettling haze stretches as the music trudges, and the vocals play tricks with your mind, further warping any wellness. The heat then picks up, the growls sludge, and the guitar work beams into the sky before disappearing. “In Cipher I Weep” has the bass quivering and guitars teasing before the thing is fully engulfed, and the synth creates a poisonous cloud. There’s a mean fury that penetrates and leads into cold streams that chill you to the bone, rendering you endlessly shivering. A mystical weirdness expands as double-kick drums rumble in your chest, the growls melt, and the guitars inject a sudden heat that scorches your icy heart.

“The Needful” is psychedelic and watery as the growls crush and the bass slinks through. A deathly march lurches as misery spreads, elegant blood tributaries flow, and the track pounds away before ending in a vortex. “Dream Unending” is the latest in the line of songs named after its creators, and at 11:07, it’s the longest cut on the record. Things purposely meander as the darkness thickens, and the playing clobbers, sending a sense of goth mystery and death morbidity. Strange speaking seems to slip in from a dream, while moody guitars collect and amplify its mystical surroundings before the playing rips open your chest. Strange winds blow, the power collects and adds pressure, and the track bubbles out in a frosty cover. “Forgotten Farewell” is a brief interlude where guitars heat up and generate steam, folding into a sound squall and toward the closing title track that wanders amid chilling wastelands paving the road to hell. Growls crush as the enveloping chaos gives off a tingling sensation all through your muscles, and the guitars generate heat that feels more mentally intrusive than comforting. Hulking growls menace as McKenna Rae’s voice adds a mysterious texture to the swarm, making you willing lose consciousness and submit to the icy deluge that encapsulates your soul forever.

Dream Unending’s debut is hitting at just the right time, when the weather is turning against us, and the frost and cold is about to take hold. “Tide Turns Eternal” packs decades of musical influences, many not metallic, and forms them into something that feels like a product of your deep slumber, amplified by your pain. This union is a strange yet effective one, something that hopefully continues to grow and warp in the future into forms we can’t even imagine in our present state.

For more on the band, go here: https://www.instagram.com/thedreamisunending/

To buy the album, go here: https://www.20buckspin.com/collections/dream-unending

For more on the label, go here: https://www.20buckspin.com/