Mashing genres isn’t a new discovery and there are still plenty of bands that do it so well, creating seamless juxtapositions with often oppositional styles, blending into an entity to itself. Flip the table over though and you can have a band that musters up a cluster fuck of a record where sticking on a pair of bird’s wings to a cat with some thumbtacks doesn’t mean it can fly. It’s still a cat and one that’s in agony at this stage.

Dweller on the Threshold, who include members of Ampere and Death To Tyrants, are one of those bands intent on shoving as much as they can into a tight space (in this case 32 minutes) and making it work. There’s folk, hardcore, noise rock and post rock all to be found in this strange blend of beauty and noise.

The strum that introduces the album, on I (Don’t) Know You, sounds like it’s plucked from some classic alt. country records and together with the vocals exudes a lonely bar stool in the corner atmosphere until the hammering, slow drums interrupt everything, eventually leading into the lush ambience of The Woods: Electric. All breaks away then for the livid hardcore of Crumbling House, it’s a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on something like a Cancer Bats record. Three songs into Dweller on the Threshold and folk, country and pugnacious melodic hardcore are all accounted for.

There are moments where you may be scratching your head wondering what exactly this album is trying to accomplish. At times, it strikes moments of brilliance and then it can be ploddy and feel a little directionless within one song.

A song like Waves though whips the record back into invigorating territory with a dissonant and abrasive guitar tone that slices through the speakers but once again the record swerves for the somnambulant climes of Cantos 984, recalling some spectral vocals like that of a haunted and wounded Jack Johnson to begin before rasping riffs pervade the din again.

Last song Bell is one of the glimmering jewels on this album. Initially pacing through more ambient passages with some beautifully layered vocals, and much like its predecessor, it eventually reintroduces some dissonance once again to appropriately (as much as it is possible) round things off. Dweller on the Threshold is certainly one of the most interesting and diverse records you’ll hear this year with plenty going on to sink your teeth into.

Drop-d Rating: 7/10

Dweller on the Threshold