Camille Giraudeau is no stranger to the strange. Having lent his talents to Smohalla, Stagnant Waters, and more, this multi-instrumentalist’s mettle has been proven as an avant-master of a weirder caliber. Dreams of the Drowned, however, has languished in the past. A solo project in the truest sense, Giraudeau somehow handling all instruments, ths Dreams of the Drowned project first surfaced in the late 2000s with hopes of a new album to emerge soon thereafter, but instead fell back into the obscurity from whence it was birthed. Now, a decade later, the great maw of impenetrable oddity opens, threatening to drown all who tread in its black waters.
A slurried blend of black metal with elements of disaffected, powerful post-punk, harsh ambiance, and the drunken, swaying sounds of Vicotnik and Czral’s mid-1990s ventures into a similar sort of freakish fantasticness, Dreams of the Drowned looks back to Norway’s “post-black metal”, but also to an uncertain future. Though Dreams of the Drowned’s debut album Dreams of the Drowned I wears it’s influences on its sleeve, Giraudeau’s own voice remains a constant through his music’s thick wall of haze and confusion.
As a bit of a cherry on top, Dreams of the Drowned I features an ambitious, true-to-form cover of Dødheimsgard’s “Midnattskogens sorte kjerne”, featuring the man himself (Aldrahn) on vocals.
Dreams of the Drowned I will be available March 21st on Bandcamp.
