“…a whirlwind of progressive death metal that balances technical prowess with guttural brutality and progressive creativity. It’s a dense exploration in all that is heavy…” Toilet Ov Hell
Nostrum is the debut full-length from Maryland-based progressive death metal trio DIALOGIA. Unleashed last month, the ten-track offering is a staggering, conceptual sonic journey uniting a disparate cast of musicians to urge you to cross the threshold of shadows into the ether. Featuring guest appearances by Barre Gambling (Daylight Dies), Bobby Koelble (ex-Death), Guthrie Iddings (ex-Daylight Dies), and many others, Nostrum entices its listeners to traverse skeletal voids into a world that wails, filled with the seismic shudders of voices that were never meant to be known. These are exotic surroundings, from serene, disembodied soundscape to a vicious percussive maelstrom, from stagnant shadowy waters to the harsh judgment of breathing stone… but they may feel hauntingly familiar to a select few.
Crowning DIALOGIA‘s Nostrum, “a whirlwind of progressive death metal that balances technical prowess with guttural brutality and progressive creativity,” Toilet Ov Hell is pleased to host some behind-the-scenes footage chronicling the creation of this stunning debut.
View the making of Nostrum at THIS LOCATION.
Nostrum was self-recorded between 2017 and 2019, mixed by Tymon Kruidenier (ex-Cynic) at TymonSound, and mastered by Brett Caldas-Lima at Tower Studio, and features the cover art of Dasha Pliska
Nostrum is out now digitally. For orders, visit the official DIALOGIA Bandcamp page at THIS LOCATION where the record can be streamed.
DIALOGIA was born when childhood friends Alejandro Nogales and Bobby Tufino, who had met while growing up in Bolivia in the 1990s, reconnected after a ten-year silence to find that they shared the same predilection for dread in art, and the same fascination with the worlds that lie beneath the surface of our own. The band’s name, a portmanteau of the concepts “dialogic” and “-logia,” reflects the impulse to make a wholly dark metal record that was not just an extension of the albums that had come before, but that would in turn inform (and transform) the very same divine works that had led to its creation.
The ambition of the demos called for an inhuman drummer: Jasper Barendregt’s extreme drumming with Dodecahedron (and later, Ulsect) proved him to be well-suited for the music’s most relentless moments, but it was his subtle, emotive work on the self-titled Our Oceans album that demonstrated the range of abilities required for the music that would become Nostrum. Masterful guest performances from dark metal luminaries such as Barre Gambling (Daylight Dies) and Bobby Koelble (ex-Death) elevated the songs still further, and the live strings and choral passages performed by musicians recruited from all over the world added an organic authenticity rarely found in a debut album.
“Nostrum is a whole journey, and I would go so far as to say that it is an experience… Not a lot of bands manage to pack such a cohesive and well-planned sonic output on their first go. Hell, not a lot of bands manage to do that several albums into their careers.” – Everything Is Noise
“A deep, philosophical concept album, the ten-track Nostrum is ambitious in scope and already displays the band’s ability to weave a narrative musically and elsewhere.” – Ghost Cult
“Nostrum features a dose of Dark Metal-era Bethlehem as much as it lands within the Psychotic Waltz realm of prog metal, some curtain of gloom hangs over the chassis of its core movements just enough to keep DIALOGIA from sounding too hopeful or dryly polished. The effect is an intelligence that is difficult to predict, a sensation of an individual who is smart and a bit dangerous for it. It is a very accomplished and well-woven tension to bring into a debut full-length.” – Grizzly Butts
“This debut album sounds like the pinnacle of a band… each step that is taken carries an innate coherence, it is woven like the geometry of a deadly spider web, harmful and captivating.” – RTMB (translated)
“Not enough superlatives exist for the quality of the Maryland-based dark metallers’ debut album.” – Invicta Magazine
http://www.facebook.com/dialogiaband
http://www.dialogia.info
http://dialogia.bandcamp.com
http://www.instagram.com/dialogiaband