11th April 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s still early days for London alternative / progressive metal quartet DAVAAR, formed in the summer of 2024 and with just five shows behind them, but they’ve wasted no time in venturing beyond London in their quest to build a fan-base, or in committing a chunk of their repertoire to tape (so to speak) for the release of this, their debut EP.
Although State of Feeling features four tracks, the title track is an instrumental introduction which is barely a minute long. This is a practice within metal circles that’s become so common as to be predictable and formulaic. It seemed to rise to prominence with the explosion of metalcore’s popularity in the 2010s, and often seemed to be an attempt to cover all bases for the purpose of a wider audience, as if to say ‘listen, we can play, we can do atmospheric and moody and gentle as well as WAAAAUUUGHHHHHH!’. But in doing so, it would often undermine the power of the attacking rage parts.
In fairness, it’s a little different in context of this EP, in that as much as DAVAAR trade in big riffs, their sound is cinematic, melodic, expansive, with clean vocals all the way. And so it is that this opening cut is softly atmospheric, bordering on ambient. A distant beat echoes through the drifting sonic mist. ‘Impulse’ arrives, not on a tidal wave of slugging riffery, but a ripple of picked, reverby guitar, and it’s only after some carefully-crafted build-up does the distortion kick in and the first of the big riffs hits. Even then, everything stays balanced, and the melody remains the focal point, and it’s easy to observe the parallels in their sound with those of their influences and acts they suggest sharing common ground with, including Sleep Token, Tesseract, Leprous, and Deftones.
There’s a lot of attention to detail in the song structures and the overall composition, with high levels of technical adeptness on display. There’s also a lot of polish here, with the end result being that State of Feeling feels fully formed, and DAVAAR’s potential to attain a substantial following is clear.
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 