Dagoba announces its comeback with By Night, its new album.
Since 1997, the french band created by Shawter (vocals/samples) found their placed into the french, then international scene, mainly with shows in Europe, Japan and the United States. For this eighth album, released in 2022, the band is completed by Richard de Mello (guitar, Deluge), Kawa Koshigero (bass) and Theo Gendron (drums, Master Crow, Exocrine, Widespread Disease).
We begin with Neons, a quite modern composition with strange samples which will slowly increase before letting place to The Hunt, the first single of the album. Very effective, the song immediately offers a hooking groove coupled to Melodic Death influences and Indus tones, creating a room for clean vocals during choruses, while screams are very present on verses, like for Sunfall and its dark tones. The song is really raw but also quite hooking, creating a contrast with massive parts, while Bellflower Dawn stays into pure effectiveness and this fairly melodic groove. Some Metalcore accents come to strengthen the vocal range’s differences, as those haunting leads, then On The Run unveils female vocals to accompany Shawter, creating some increasingly catchy quietness. Bleak offers some modern break before City Light reconnects with pure effectiveness. Riffs are easy but catchy, allowing vocals to have the main role, while Nightclub melts this modernity to Synthwave accents with a heavy groove. Leads walk with those heady vocals, then the sound becomes heavier on Summer’s Gone and its heady samples. Vocals offer very powerful parts as hooking choruses, then the band comes back to impressive tones with The Last Crossing and its effective rhythmic. We clearly feel the band’s primary influences are back, which will for sure benefit them with this stage-shaped song, then the album ends with Stellar, a very modern and quite dark outro which still unveils some heady tones before fading away.
Dagoba evolved. The sound is definitely more modern, more accessible, but still very effective. By Night unveils additional influences the band will not hesitate to use on stage to federate a crowd.
75/100
