Dusks Embrace – “The Twilight Enigma”

Dusks Embrace’s The Twilight Enigma is the follow up to Paradigm Shift which was released in 2009. Paradigm Shift is one of my fave albums of all time and when I heard The Twilight Enigma, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as Paradigm. As it turns out, it’s even better! That kind of quality of writing and production from an unsigned band was unheard of to me! Josh Brewer, vocalist, guitarist and lyricist, demands the best of himself as a producer and clearly pushes himself very hard to make the best possible product.

This blackened, death metal quartet hails from Dallas, Oregon, a tiny little town outside of Salem, Oregon… still have no clue? I can’t blame you. Dallas has the Western Oregon University campus, a burger joint, churches and fields, bucolic splendor at it’s peak. A non-metal head might be confused about how, considering the environment, a blackened, death metal band manages to arise from the setting, metal heads know all to well. You wouldn’t have to explain it to Slipknot. Well, I will go a little more in depth. One of those aforementioned churches is ran by Josh Brewer’s father. This is the primary reason for the power and dark themes of The Twilight Enigma.

The Twilight Enigma is an exploration into the mind of a person that has experienced first hand the downsides of religion. Themes ranging from loss or lack of personal identity, brainwashing and the continental divide that exists in a person when that person has been told to believe in a thing his entire life, but his logic and rationale won’t allow him to. The background is, no doubt, familiar to some of you. There is true pain, anger and, to some extent shame, in such things. The lyrical depth is of that of a man well beyond his years and of high enough calibur to make Dave Mustaine want to quit writing.

Lyrics like these combined with some of the cleanest and most precise guitar parts are enough to leave any metal head wanting more. The re-listenability of this record is a huge thing for me. That’s what took this record from great to amazing, for me. There is so much nuance to this record between thundering percussion, precision guitar without sacrificing mega riffs, keys for days and lyrical content that one listen just isn’t enough for me. I’m not a great aficionado of black or death metal, like so many others. This record changed that. I’ve become more akin to the genre because of The Twilight Enigma. This was THE record of 2010 for me. Fans of Opeth, Children of Bodom and In Flames are sure to love this album.  [ END ]

Track Listing:

01. Armageddon
02. Imagination’s Cruelty
03. Desecrated Labyrinth
04. The Twilight Enigma
05. Ambivalence Stray
06. Oblivion at Hand
07. As Vestiges Pale
08. Waking the Omni
09. Behind Our Silence Wall
10. Oracle’s Song of Unceasing Wrath
11. Moondial

Run Time: 44:42
Release Date: 09.05.2010