Showing Off Both The Light And Dark Sides Of Mountain Of Smoke, Today’s Track Is Perfect For First Time Listeners Of The Metal Act.

Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week. 

Mountain of Smoke – “The Glass King”
RIYL: Game of Thrones marathons
What else you should know: We’ve known about Mountain of Smoke for a while. Featuring their “The Weeping Spine” all the way back in 2019, we’re stoked to finally hear that song with nine other bangers on one album called Imprinted.

Today, let’s dive into the four minutes of balanced peace and harshness of “The Glass King.”

Imprinted was recorded over the course of two years and it’s seeing the light of day in the beautiful springtime of 2022. Doing a band the DIY way can be a slow slog, and a pandemic made a lot of records sit on the backburner. Thankfully, this Dallas-based trio’s new LP is ready to crumble your eardrums. (Another LP and an EP are in the works, per the band.)

“The Glass King” is a great balance between the lighter, heaven-like side of the band and the harsher, punch-in-the-face side. The band – Alex Johnson, PJ Costigan and Brooks Willhoite – has two vocalists and several guests on this album, including Nicole “Nikki Cage” Estill from True Widow, who is featured prominently on this track.

The band is not afraid to add other instruments not usually found on doomy sludge, like pedal steel and synths. It might have a Sleep/Mastodon kind of vibe, but it doesn’t sound like it wants to stay in any single lane. The members openly love Blade Runner, and you can hear some of that influence on “The Glass King.”

This is the making of an interesting and evolving band, that’s been around for 10 years at this point. If you don’t evolve your sound with time, it’s like you’re running into a wall. Mountain of Smoke shows that the stretches they have run have come to fruition.

Enjoy the space age sludge.

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