Perhaps it was destiny that David Gilmour knocked at RMR’s steely gate late at night this fall and – to everybody’s surprise – garnered a review. For a solo piece he released in 2024, no less. So, the crew here basked in the creamy, warm light of smooth groove and established alt-rock with a flow addiction for a long while.
Fast forward to reality, and Dawnwalker just appeared on our radar. Again? It sounds like the Review Desk just did a piece on them – last year. And indeed so. The psychedelically tainted The Unknowing hit in 2024 and garnered a review, too. And it’s funny, our prediction just got confirmed. It is that diminishing returns thing. RMR’s coverage of Ages started at 58 minutes of airplay. The Between and its 32-minute one-song behemoth now sits at 6 minutes below its predecessor, The Unknowing.1
The old adage that no Dawnwalker record sounds alike is somewhat confirmed again. Somewhat, because Mark Norgate drew some of the material from past influences. And all of that while taking the Eastern esoteric route with Sofia Sourianou‘s soft chanting and telling you that there should be “…nothing to fear…” in between bells ringing and Dane Cross‘ harsh vocals. Creating a one-track album ain’t a novel concept, of course. The idea has been tried and tested by bands such as Pink Floyd decades ago.2 Usually by introducing giant, wildly gyrating tracks that seemed to go nowhere, embedded into a motley selection of – stuff.3 A more contemporary example may be Insomnium’s Winter’s Gate of 2016.
The difficulty of such an endeavor is maintaining the audience’s attention levels. But fear naught. The Between is the creature of a master of the trade. In truth, Norgate cut the half-hour piece into fourteen different sections, all with a different flavor. You’ll get an ebb and flow of dream-like groove, softly flowing soundscapes that seem to coalesce around the singers. Harsh growls and vile rasps follow ethereal musings. Otherworldly duets suddenly appear that shouldn’t work but do so anyway. Harmonies in a disharmonious kinda meandering soundscape, like. And suddenly, the softly crooning saxophone leads this whole gaggle of strumming musicians to new pastures. The piece is studded with little gems and shiny nuggets of that kind.
And there’s more House of Sand baked into this contraption than one would expect. The beginning of the piece is pretty tribal with hints of shamanic musings and things Heilung may have done. But then a first woozy sandy section starts, around 2:50 or so. That one doesn’t last for too long, because next thing you know, a neat breakdown into harsh metal will jolt you awake. The next session with shoreline gold4 will happen once 12:10 hits. And this tells me that The Between is as much a reflection on past records as it is an exploration of new and more ethereal things.
So, where does this leave us? Dawnwalker‘s Mark Norgate again outdid himself with yet another surprise. One that hit our review pipe without any warning. The Between is living proof that even a meandering one-track piece can keep interest levels up. Erring somewhere in the murky frontier existing between life and death and favoring Eastern and mountain-based esoteric undercurrents, the record nonetheless exerts a pretty decent pull that will egg you on until the end. And that is a difficult feat to pull off in the first place. If only the band had eased the cadence of the ever-changing styles, moods, and flavors some. This would have calmed things down some and provided that much-needed groove and a much better coherence. And this prevented the storyline from flowing through more easily.
But that’s small potatoes in the grander theme of things. In the end, The Between turned into a very good record and a worthy add-on to Dawnwalker‘s growing collection. As to the RMR crew, we’re already waiting for their next shot.
Record Rating: 7/10 | Label: Self-Released | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 24 October 2025