One of my favorite things about being a critic is getting to hear new music from all over the world. I've listened to death metal from Andora, I've heard black metal from Mongolia, South Africa, and now I get atmospheric black metal from Blitar, East Java, Indonesia. Metal truly is an international treasure. Dusk in Silence is a one man project rather than two, but just like modern projects I wouldn't have guessed without looking at the band members. It's atmospheric black metal tradition to release music under a pseudonym and I hope H gets a look at this review because he absolutely nailed the tone and soundscape I want from this kind of upbeat, uptempo atmospheric black metal. It speaks of despair and hope, of elation and elegy, without the lyrics I don't truly know what it's about however when it comes to black metal often the tone tells enough of the story to get a picture.

The production on this is tremendous, it has just enough of that cold distant feeling to sound like black metal, but the mix is absolutely superb. The drums are perfectly EQed which is so tough. The guitars are punchy, but with the treble frequencies turned up so they cut through and oh man the vocals are so good. H hits the perfect middle ground between guttural death vox and black metal shrieks that chill the blood and gives you goosebumps. I don't know how well I can differentiate the individual songs because they do sort of blend together, but that's not what's important. The feel, the emotions elicited, the sense of longing, of hope, of the verge of despair, that is what stuck with me from this album. I know not what trauma has struck this artist, and yet somehow I get the sense they have known their fair share of tragedy, else they are adept at replicating other's tragedy. This is the kind of black metal I could listen to all day, it reminds me of bands like Saor, but less folk inspired and more straight forward (also with better production). Actually it reminds me even more of an album I reviewed in 2020 from a band called Dismalimerence, a debut black metal album with a focus on sweeping emotion and setting a dissonant, yet melodious backdrop. Back to the guitars, somehow they are perfectly clean, and yet biting, laying down a foundation of tension and release throughout the entire album that feels perfectly paced. I felt like I knew exactly where the music was going most of the time, but still none of the songs ever bored me because the execution and songwriting are quite succinct.

This album catches me at an odd moment I admit, not minutes before I started work on my review I finished watching the incredibly emotional series finale of Mash. For my non American readers it was a show about doctors operating during the Korean War (created during the Vietnam war) and all of the trauma, heartbreak and tragedy that goes along with being a doctor in a warzone. Somehow this album just seemed to resonate with my emotional state at the time and amplified those emotions. Music is so many things, an escape, a reminder of better and worse times. The greatest thing we can ask for is that music touches us, that it makes us feel something, and maybe it's because I was already emotionally fragile at the moment but this album truly touched my heart and soul and reminded me of how beautiful even black metal can be.

To my memory I haven't heard any metal from Indonesia before, but this one man project has left a rather large impression on me and so I shall keep an eye out for Indonesian metal, I'm sure the scene is bigger than I realize. I don't think this is a perfect album and yet I find it hard to find any criticism to level at this album, other than perhaps at 33:57 it was shorter than I wanted. I craved more of this exact kind of black metal when I finished, so I listened to it again, then I listened to it again after that. Sometimes our feelings towards an album, as critics are prisoners of the moment. Sometimes an album comes to us as just the right moment, to make the right impact and tug at the heart strings and I realize that this is far, far from an objective review yet how could I write it any other way? There is no greater feeling than when a new album swoops in and grasps my heart with gentle hands, it's something I think I haven't felt in a while and so I'd like to stay here with this feeling, just a little longer.