The Indiana shoegaze trio returns with a songs-first, vibes-second concept album that’s both punchy and immersive.
Listening to Cloakroom can feel like submerging yourself in an isolation tank. The riffs swallow you whole; the spectral vocals dance behind your eyelids; the sedate tempos distort your sense of time. More than any of their heavy shoegazing contemporaries, the Indiana three-piece subsists on all-consuming atmosphere, which is partially why the “doomgaze” tag, referencing the slower, thicker end of the metal spectrum, has stuck. Maintaining an intoxicating environment for an entire album is a powerful feat, but it’s also a big ask of the listener—it doesn’t lend itself to dipping a toe in and splashing around a bit.
Dissolution Wave, the follow-up to 2017’s Time Well, is a less daunting listen despite its heady themes. It is a concept album about the aftermath of a catastrophic global event that destroys all of Earth’s existing art and philosophy. This, for some reason, results in a world that runs on music—but not just any music. Something called the “Spire and Ward of Song” acts as a filter that only allows the “best material” to pass through and power Earth’s rotation. Throughout the album, vocalist/guitarist Doyle Martin sings from the perspective of an asteroid miner who spends his free time writing music, honing his craft to aid his planet’s survival. While some artists rely on A&Rs, friends, or their own ears to decide which songs are album-worthy, Cloakroom constructed a theoretical framework worthy of an Ursula K. Le Guin novel to get into a “bangers only” mentality.
No lyrics sheets or in-depth interviews, however, are necessary to hear how the structural conceit affected their work. At just 37 minutes, Dissolution Wave is Cloakroom’s shortest album by far, dwarfed by the hour-long Time Well. And while the band’s signature sound is intact, these songs arrive at their climaxes more efficiently and offer more variance in pacing, volume, and tone. The opening “Lost Meaning” sets the scene with a single snare hit and a perfectly timed squeal of distortion, and boom, we’re in the thick of the first verse. The subtle tweaks and tightenings make for a punchy album that still feels immersive.
The central braintrust of Martin and bassist Bobby Markos is joined by a new drummer, Tim Remis, whose propulsive but unshowy style recalls the jump in dynamics that stoner metal titans Sleep found with Neurosis’ Jason Roeder behind the kit. And while Cloakroom and Sleep share a penchant for exploring a single mood for extended periods of time, Cloakroom have grown increasingly interested in broadening their sound with acoustic guitars and synthesizers. On Dissolution Wave, Markos and Martin integrate those textures into the bedrock of heavy guitar and bass tones that they’ve spent 10 years honing. “Fear of Being Fixed” begins with a jagged bassline straight out of Electric Wizard’s Dopethrone, but in its heaviest moment, opts for a stately acoustic guitar to lead the charge. “Doubts,” the loveliest song Cloakroom have ever written, could pass for a decades-old country ballad were it not for the wispy keys (courtesy of Hum’s Matt Talbott) drifting by like soft-focus tumbleweeds.
The “space western” storyline of Desolation Waves inspires Cloakroom to write songs like the world depends on it: They’ve always had riffs, but they no longer seem content to ride them out until the wheels fall off. This is a songs-first, vibes-second album, although Cloakroom have spent so long perfecting their sound that it now comes second nature, no matter how concise or clear-headed the songwriting has become. Martin’s lyrics directly address this challenging balance, albeit from the perspective of an amateur musician trying to cobble together a new musical language, a process so delicate he compares it to “bottling lightning beams.” On “Doubts,” he debates the merits of tried-and-true methods versus complete artistic reinvention: “Maybe I should cherish the gift/Maybe I should smash the mirror to bits.” Settling for the middle ground, Dissolution Wave crystallizes Cloakroom’s strengths while refuting the idea that concept albums are always bloated and pretentious.
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