Album Review: Dumbsaint - Something That You Feel Will Find Its Own Form

Post-rock is a problematic genre for a variety of reasons, but the biggest hurdle to overcome for any band travelling down this path is to avoid falling into the pit of repetition and familiarity. Sydney trio Dumbsaint throw their collective technical force behind debut Something That You Feel Will Find Its Own Form - keeping generic tropes such as verbose song titles and quiet-loud dynamics in check - and halfway through opening track Rivers Will Be Crossed it feels like a ballsy, effervescent offering is in store. Not so, unfortunately.

The majority of these eight songs exceed seven minutes, and most of them commit the cardinal sin of feeling bloated. Cinematic starts off with frenetic, crunching riffs and rolling drums that evokes an impending maelstrom, yet by the end feels too generic to be truly breathtaking. Likewise on Lying In Sign, with its Cog-esque guitar and thick bassline, promises an epic number that suffers from laying it on far too thick. Every member is technically fantastic, with Nick Andrews' heroics behind the kit especially noteworthy, but these compositions overstay their welcome. The only track to keep it relatively short, the four-and-a-half minute Inwaking, works perfectly in its focused drive, something that the other tracks tragically miss. By cutting their songs in half and pinning down their groove with purpose, the intensity could be palpable. As it stands though, Something That You Feel... suffers from its own overblown grandiosity.