Mars Red Sky returned in 2023 with Dawn of the Dusk (which I can’t help but wonder if the title is a riff on Dawn of the Dead), which brings us down from outer space and plants us firmly on and underneath the Earth.
As seems customary, MRS open the album with a sonic blast that is led by Jimmy Kinast gravity well-like bass line. “Break Even” is a cautionary tale of selling out just to keep up with everyone else when you’re secretly miserable (“He’ll quit and join the race, the rank and file for normality. If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. Just what you’d be making exactly is anyone’s guess.”). “Maps of Inferno” is a collaboration with Queen of the Meadow and has that band’s Helen Ferguson and MRS’ Julien Pras sharing vocals about guarding a sky-high tower (perhaps one of the ruins on the album’s cover) while the empire below lives in ignorant bliss while Pras’ guitar melts everything around it.
Kinast takes over lead vocals on “The Final Round” – a song that seems to be about that aforementioned tower guarding coming down to fight some horrible menace. The instrumental track “A Choir of Ghosts” is aptly named, as it’s spooky, heavy, and menacing. Mathieu Gazeau‘s drums take front stage on “Carnival Man,” moving from stoner metal rumbling to almost jazz-rock cymbal work.
After the brief instrumental “Trap Door,” we have “Slow Attack.” It encapsulates many of the album’s lyrics and themes of vigilance, combat, loneliness, isolation, ruin, and emergence from that ruin. Pras and Kinast’s guitars unleash fire from above on it while Gazeau’s drums bring to mind structures crumbling under that assault.
Mars Red Sky have begun dabbling in prog-rock with Dawn of the Dusk, which isn’t a bad thing. It will be interesting to hear where they go next. They’ve been to space and returned to an altered planet. What’s next? Back to Mars? A journey within the self? It should be a wild journey.
Keep your mind open.
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