German Black Metal outlet, Dauþuz, are back from a 2-year gestation with ‘Uranium’, their boldly titled sixth full-length album. This self-proclaimed Gediegen Schwarzmetall (Mining Black Metal) project has been mixing various genre elements to create captivating Black Metal concoctions that are showcased on their latest release. While they’ve chosen a curious niche to base their lyrics and aesthetics around, you won’t find anything in the music that suggests an auditory connection with mining. What you will find instead are blast beats, tremolo picking galore, and some impressive vocal performances – both harsh and clean.
Getting as close as it can get to sing-along Black Metal, the clean vocals compliment melodies that are sure to make people raise some massive invisible oranges during live performances – which Dauþuz should really look into! This is best expressed in tracks like ‘Wüst die Heimat’. The concept of the album is based around the uranium element, and the first track – ‘Pechblende (Gedeih und Verderben)’ – opens up with an unsettling radiation sounds before a hail of chaos bursts forth and sets the tone for the entire album. Alas, that very elemental noise is way too similar to what we hear on Mgla’s ‘Age of Excuse’ – except the latter being the sound of gnawing teeth.
The music itself is vastly different from Mgla. Dauþuz are fully committed to standard Black Metal tropes, but never shy away from experimenting with subgenres. In fact, if you didn’t know the band and their whole mining concept, you’d think they were your run-of-the-mill Pagan Black Metal band. And even then, you’d be caught off guard when the Depressive Suicide Black Metal vocals hit. And that’s what caught my attention and made me listen to the whole album in one take. The strength point for me were definitely the vocals and tastefully they were incorporated into the music. This is a release that I’d definitely recommend.
