Sounds like…

The trip-hop afterparty for the zombie apocalypse.

The review

Emma Grey is Daughter of the Dawn. A new voice to add to the growing collective of artists who can rock the dead back to life with their goth drenched guitars and vocals. On her debut ‘Crushed Into The Dust from the Weight of the World’, this daughter is at her most comfortable in the darkest of nights.

Across the five tracks, Daughter of the Dawn straddles a relatively untapped intersection of goth rock and dreamy trip-hop. On one hand, she is slaying demons with slow and brooding guitar gazing. On the other, we are enjoying rhythmic beats and the odd vocoder phrase as reversed glass synths fracture around us. It isn’t a combo I’ve heard often mashed together in such a goth manner and it is a lovely numb time for all to enjoy. Think Chelsea Wolfe is she had a penchant for adding in some more electronic elements to her weight sound and you are nearly spot-on.

This album is best played as a mood. These aren’t songs that immediately jump out at you but they fester and burn across their lengthy purges. Particular standout is the opener ‘Juniper Boughs Collide Upon My Shores’ which features haunting guitar riffs and vocals to match. At times the music verges on drone music for the nihilist. It picks away slowly and then gives way to some relief as the guitars fall away to echoing layers of Emma’s voice. ‘The Liminal Space Which I Own’ feels part monk choir, part brooding gothic ritual. This delicate balance permeates the whole album and is one of the reasons I really enjoyed sinking into it.

With all the vocal layering and processing, sometimes lyrics are tricky to catch on first listen but if you listen Daughter of the Dawn has plenty to say. Joy, pain, passion, love, creativity and discovery are all themes that resonate here. The lyrics are a heady mix of esoteric cryptic messages and wonderfully blunt messages of power. I’m sure it won’t have escaped listeners that in the smoothest and calmest of voices that evoke religious undertones, Emma sings ‘your cunt is gold’. Touché. There are plenty of goldmines to undercover here. Pun intended.

Fans of Emma Ruth Rundle, Chelsea Wolfe and Marissa Nadler will click with Daughter of the Dawn immediately. Whilst not as rock heavy, it is as atmospherically dense as all three of those artists. If you want to take some trip-hop to the undead awakening, Daughter of the Dawn has you more than covered.

Recommended track: Juniper Boughs Collide Upon My Shores

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