Cloak doesn’t get a lot of love, which is really everyone else’s fault, not theirs. If this Atlanta foursome’s variance of trad-rock infused, Tribulation and In Solitude melding, chimeric charm doesn’t do it for you, then there may not be much hope for your feeble mind. You might as well take a couple of Dave Clark 5 LPs into a bunker and spin them on repeat until the bombs drop. The Burning Dawn is the Cloak’s second LP and sonic successor to 2017’s To Venomous Depths. Detractors might point out that Cloak’s sound isn’t the most original, but what the band lacks in this department, they make up for in sheer, ruthless execution. The Burning Dawn is as solid as a stone titan and has plenty of swaggering, seething angst to get you and the boys (and girls and everyone in-between) fist-pumping, stomping the ground like prehistoric beasts, and swilling cheap beer while you howl at the moon. The album starts strong with the fiery, speed-crust tear of “The Cleansing Fire,” and follows up with the bleak, twilight dirge of “A Voice in the Night,” and the deathly winter’s knell of “Tempter’s Call.” Still need more bleak brooding bangers to bob your locks to? Skip ahead to wintery and phantasmagoric instrumental “The Fire, the Faith, the Void,” a dark meditative harbinger of what I hope are even greater things to come on future releases.
Grab a copy of on vinyl to spin in your den at home through Season of Mist here.
