Review Summary: Fallujah follows up their breakout album "The Flesh Prevails" with an even more ambitious and satisfying release.
Bay Area technical/progressive death metal act Fallujah went from being a promising upstart band with a decent sized albeit very passionate fanbase to one of the most hyped bands in extreme metal following the release of their widely-acclaimed sophomore LP The Flesh Prevails in 2014. The pressure to follow up an almost universally beloved album like The Flesh Prevails is immense, especially when you're a young act who hasn't previously garnered this level of attention while in the process of writing new material and are dealing with a genre of music whose fans are amongst the harshest critics on the planet. Fallujah thankfully didn't let their newfound prestige go to their heads. The euphoric Dreamless is not only a worthy follow-up to The Flesh Prevails, it's a noticeable improvement over it on both a musical and emotional level.
Dreamless takes the distinct sound they established on The Flesh Prevails and essentially injects it with the musical equivalent of performance-enhancing drugs. The death metal parts hit harder, the solos from guitarist Scott Corstairs are more frequent and technically-dazzling, and the striking, often beautiful progressive elements make up a larger portion of the album. It might lack the freshness of the dramatic sound overhaul they introduced on The Flesh Prevails, but Dreamless sees the band taking that established sound to stunning new heights.
As always with Fallujah, they are at their best when they're frequently shifting between blistering technical death metal and emotionally-dense progressive/ambient rock over the course of the same song. The full-on aural assault of "Adrenaline" is punctuated with a mellow Middle Eastern-guitar influenced outro while the intense verses of "The Void Alone", "Amber Gaze" and "Wind for Wings" are broken up by lengthy mid-sections featuring gorgeous melodies and haunting, subtle clean vocals from guest vocalists Tori Letzler and Katie Thompson. It's pretty incredible to listen to a band that veers so frequently into deeply melodic/ambient territory without losing the sinister edge and jaw-dropping technicality that makes them a death metal powerhouse. There's been a flood of young prog/tech death bands that have released records in the past 18 months that have tried to copy their unconventional approach to the genre, but they don't even come close to matching the broad, sweeping scope and deep emotional impact that Fallujah consistently achieves with their music.
The superb musicianship, layered songwriting and intoxicating atmosphere are still the most endearing elements of the record, but to be completely honest, anyone that has listened to their material in the past has come to expect those things on each release they put out. What elevates Dreamless past the rest of their discography is the stellar production. The biggest knock on The Flesh Prevails was its compressed production that made the entire record sound mechanical and forced all of the instruments to bleed into one another for the duration of the record. On Dreamless, every layer is given the proper space to breathe and it leads to all of the band's strengths reaching a new level of effectiveness. The well-balanced production highlights the power of each haunting melody, punchy riff, tortured scream, etc. they lay down in each song and ensures that all five members of the band get their respective times in the spotlight. Hopefully the band will continue to have production that matches or surpasses the crispness of Dreamless on their future releases.
Dreamless is the record I knew was Fallujah was capable of making since I first heard The Harvest Wombs in early 2012. The growth they continue to show as musicians and songwriters with each new release they put out is simply staggering and during a period of time where metal bands are releasing thoroughly underwhelming records at a seemingly record clip, it's a delight to experience a album that manages to get better each time you listen to it. Fallujah is inching closer to putting out a transcendent release and if they can continue to progress at their current rate, I wouldn't be shocked if their next release was a game-changing masterpiece that sent a lasting ripple effect throughout the entire metal community.
