02 October 2020 - 0 Comments

“We’re writing songs that we want to hear. We’re going after heavy music that’s forward-looking,” says vocalist and guitarist, Mathew Bosher. R is the concluding chapter in volume one of Domes’ experiment with metal, space rock and post-hardcore.

Recorded on a 1939 heritage vessel moored on the River Thames in London some 18,000 kilometres from home, the track is the product of the band’s experimental approach, pursuit of nuance and sense of adventure. Distilling their accumulated experience across several bands, album releases and international tours, the mission for Domes was to do it all differently.

“With the band spread across Australia and New Zealand, we wrote and recorded remotely for a year using an iterative design process. We built a library of riffs in the cloud as we prototyped, tested and re-wrote each others’ ideas. The tracks experienced major developments and we only played together twice before entering the studio. Our experiment was much about agile ways of working as it was creativity—and it was hugely productive,” says Bosher.

Situated in the old machine room aboard the lightship, encased in a quarter-inch-thick steel hull, the band spent a week at Soup Studio pushing vintage recording gear to hard rock and metal boundaries. Mastered at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, the record is steeped in iconic equipment and its storied past.

Malady revels in meticulous tonal detail; firing off broad strokes of kinetic energy and juxtaposing tense intervals with thick sines waves of fuzz. "On this record, we wanted to make moments where the ground falls out from beneath your feet. At least some people said they stopped breathing for a second when that bass first comes in,“ says bassist, Brendon Kahi.

The Futurist intensifies things with seismic shifts between thrash and pop-like harmonic sensibilities. The effect has a compelling if disturbing quality that resonates with the subject matter. “The songs speak to a sort of existential threat—technological, social or perhaps ecological,” says Bosher. “As with the music, there’s a sense of foreboding dissonance with far-off relief.”

Time and Relative Dimension in Space, accelerates Domes’ space rock exploration of the metal universe, navigating dense meteor fields of drum patterns and expansive nebula of melody. “Directionally, this is where we think we’re heading on our next musical adventure,” considers Kahi. According to Bosher, “The whole project has been highly collaborative, giving rise to unanticipated outcomes and I think this song in particular benefited from us maturing that discipline.”

Bonfire of the Vanities, consolidates the band’s repertoire into a molten core of churning guitars and axial-shifting percussion. The somewhat violent but uplifting changes in tempo capture the energy and intent of this record. Likewise, Ma’adim Vallis calls out from the abyss with cryovolcanic staccato riffs and great lava flows of layered, harmonic chords.

A district narrative treatment, R mixes space race, cold war, nuclear infrastructure and retro-sci-fi imagery. Revisionist history suggests unsettling forbearance. This rough beast slouches towards the poignant conclusion of a unique experience for the band.

Listen on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and elsewhere.

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