Unbowed - "Dogma" Review

Let’s start this off with a clean slate; I’m a fan of Unbowed owning both their self-titled EP and “Collapse the World” and having seen them multiple times since I first heard of them. That in mind, I’m a fan of Unbowed and in such will be more critical than a band I have just heard of as I am unable to relate their current releases with past ones. Welcome to “Dogma” the new release from 2 man project Unbowed, Ioan Tetlow and Alex Snape are hard working guys who wrote, recorded and produced this album entirely on their own from my understanding. This means outside of a little assistance in promotion, 2 guys made this entire thing a reality, that’s just bananas to me.

                There are two different tones to this album; the first comes with “The Bleeding Throne” and “Besieged” which are the two songs that sound more Melodic Death Metal with Black Metal sprinkled on top. The former of these two, “The Bleeding Throne,” starts off with an epic build in, a march to war kind of build up, until you hear the riff in the background and all hell breaks loose, if you were making a movie or game involving a huge fight between two clans this is the song you would use. The chorus slows down slightly, which would be the moment you see the king or general stand and realize he will need to fight with his men. The chorus is followed by a mid tempo riff backed with orchestration before slowing down and letting the orchestration take over for a few bars and into a guitar solo that build up the ending of this song perfectly. Once the solo picks up and leads us to the final growl of “I will have my throne” you can really visualize the power of this song and start to build your own story with it and that is proper song writing. After one last pass through of the slow tempo chorus, the song comes to an end and into “Besieged.”

                Now instead of giving away the outline of “Besieged” I’ll let you imagine what it may sound like while I go on to the second half of the EP. “The Fall” and “Echoes of Cernunnos” round out the last two songs and again I’ll be talking about the former here as it was a bit more eyebrow rising to me. The second half is a bit more orchestration driven, and probably some of the most intricate songs I’ve heard from Unbowed. The song begins with a strong Opeth “Ghost Reveries” era sound, and stays fairly consistent with this until about halfway through when the piano solo begins, being backed with an acoustic guitar and clean electric riff and after about a minute, the song gets heavier while still sounding sincere and drawing emotion, which is something a lot of Metal lacks these days, emotion. After a small break the song kicks back in with the original riff (which made me honestly think I had accidentally turned on Opeth), followed by a short solo and once vocals kick in for the last few bars the song breaks into probably the heaviest section of the album.

                To conclude, Unbowed, what the fuck, this is an epic release and is consistent from beginning to end. While the two halves sound like they were written by different people and half different influences in the sound, it comes together incredibly well. If you’re a fan of Behemoth the first half is definitely for you and if you’re a fan of Opeth then the second half is more for you and if you’re a fan of both then the whole thing is for you. Pretty much a long winded way of saying check this out because it’s unique but pays proper homage to the influences.

4.5/5