Written by: Volt Thrower

“In the novel, Frankenstein's creation is identified by words such as 'creature,' 'monster,' 'daemon,' 'wretch,' 'fiend' and 'it.'” Thanks,  Wikipedia, for describing this album cover so that I don't have to. I know these guys don't take themselves too seriously, and I mean no disrespect to the artist, who upon a cursory search has some really nice artwork, but this is just too cheesy. Maybe I'm just a lame grouch, taking it too seriously. And I get that they're going for the old school sci-fi horror covers look, which are usually cheesy, but just slapping the antagonist of each song onto the cover, feels like a bit of a blunder. Let’s hope that the tunes are out of this world.

The album itself is a bit of a mishmash of songs, a new tune in the album opener and title track, two reworked songs from their 2017 demo For God Snakes, and a couple other tracks that the band has had in their back pocket for a while, giving them a little modern touch.

Written by: Scorpi

​This album was labelled as “Bluesy Doom” in the Sleeping Village super database of new music. And it tickled the fibers of my curiosity. How would such an album present itself in the light of day?

Dream Quest Ends is the second EP from Smoulder, a quintet from Canada who have been writing music together since 2013.

Straight off the bat I should mention there are only two “new” songs from Smoulder on this EP. The other four tracks feature three demo versions of previously released songs and a cover of Manilla Road’s “Cage of Mirrors” which we will get to in due course. However, to someone such as I, all of the goods on this EP are new.