{"id":679420,"date":"2026-11-09T10:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T10:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/679420\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T10:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T10:34:13","slug":"dream-unending-certain-uncertainties-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/679420\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream Unending: Certain Uncertainties Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cover art for the past two Dream Unending<\/a> albums, both done by Benjamin Vierling (of Ys<\/a> fame), depict shadowlike figures posed in reverence to ayahuascan landscapes. In Vierling\u2019s work, the duo have found the perfect visual incarnation of the \u201cdream-doom\u201d tag they\u2019ve borne ever since inviting funeral doom, death metal, and skyward-fixated prog to the same vision quest on 2021\u2019s Tide Turns Eternal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Certain Uncertainties, Dream Unending\u2019s third album, continues the band\u2019s incremental nudging of their heaviness-to-gentleness ratio towards the latter. Half of its songs don\u2019t bear so much as a tangential connection to metal. The album\u2019s patient wanderlust perfectly matches Vierling\u2019s artwork, but when Dream Unending graft that meandering sound onto heavier songs, their bold alchemy occasionally feels inorganic.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

At its most restrained, Certain Uncertainties is sublime. The instrumental title track blends William Tyler<\/a>-esque cosmic country with spiritual jazz\u2014the latter courtesy of a mid-song trumpet solo by Vastum<\/a>\u2019s Leila Abdul-Rauf\u2014 for a compelling, egoless slice of psychedelia. \u201cI Carry Your Burden\u201d is another decidedly un-metal song featuring a metal lifer, with Magic Circle<\/a>\u2019s Brendan Radigan taking the mic to lead an open-hearted lamentation. The song achieves a synthesis of mournful humanism and woo-woo infinitum that has few rivals in the past 60 years of hippie philosophy.<\/p>\n

Lead single \u201cStrained Sincerity\u201d opens with Certain Uncertainties\u2019 most down-the-middle doom metal passage, and then spends most of its seven-minute runtime skillfully sprinkling unexpected seasonings on top. Derrick Vella\u2019s lead guitar tones are in constant flux, pivoting from spacious reverb to spaghetti western twang to starry twinkling, all while he holds down the fort with chunky rhythm riffs. In its final third, the song forsakes carefully plotted structure and lets Vella and drummer and vocalist Justin DeTore jam out. While distorted chugs and patient doom drums churn away, Vella embarks on a noodle odyssey that feels completely untethered from its surroundings. With less than a minute left, Vella\u2019s roiling base leaps up and his glistening ceiling dips down to unite in perfect harmony, but it only lasts for one painfully brief bar, a confusing tease of what could\u2019ve been a blissful climax had it lasted just a little longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cover art for the past two Dream Unending albums, both done by Benjamin Vierling (of Ys fame),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[692,93,61,60,278,514],"class_list":["post-679420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}