Denovali is one of the few labels that has prevented me from giving up the instrumental epic rock form completely. As much as I love much of the current post-rock influenced instrumental bands that I hear, for every terrific album in this vein that I write up and carry here at Crucial Blast, I get ten other demos or promos in the mail that bring nothing new to the table, and franky bore the fuck out of me. It's gotten pretty tough lately to want to hear anything that comes in with a onesheet from the label or band with the words "Mogwai" or "Explosions In The Sky" on it.

On the other hand, Denovali clearly has an ear for top notch instrumental bands, and their vinyl reissue of the debut album from the German band Daturah displays a band that, while not really all that original, does do what they do extremely well, and with really great songwriting, which is of course what this all supposed to be about. Daturah's debut came out on CD on Graveface a few years ago, but it's been remastered by James Plotkin for this double LP release, which features the original three lengthy tracks and has a silkscreened image on the fourth side of the set. Soundwise, yeah, Mogwai and Mono are both obvious reference points, Mono especially, with gorgeous guitar melodies and strings and synths intertwining around one another and set against a brooding slow moving stormfront of pounding, sometimes vageuly motorik drumming and dark cloudy ambience. These melodies are really great, though, moody but magnificent and epic, and almost entirely instrumental save for some sampled dialogue that is buried deep in the mix a la Godspeed! You Black Emperor. And they do the whole soft-loud dynamic thing, but when they do launch into the heavier riffing, it tends to come from out of nowhere, and is less metallic than usual, sounding more like Swervedriver hooks than Isis-style sludge. Definitely a good thing. The first track "Warmachine" is the best example of this, a dreamy spaced-out drift through sheets of sad melodic guitar that culminates in crushing guitar rock, though "Lovelight" also showcases a goegeous cascading wall of delicate guitar melodies over the rhythm section's driving slow-mo throb, which builds to a majestic finale when the guitars explode in a roar of distorted melodic riffage. It's all great, with such a sad and wistful vibe to their music that it's like a perfect mix of Sigur Ros and Mono, and fans of Sigur Ros who wish that band would get "heavy" more often will especially dig Daturah's sound. Beautiful presentation for this record, too, with a thick gatefold jacket and that fourth side with it's silkscreened image of the cover art in reverse, white barren trees standing in stark contrast against a starless pitch black night sky. Limited to 350 copies.