Having been a casual fan of the band for a year or two now, I had downloaded some of their songs and thought they were quite amazing but never pursued to get their releases in full. Well, after getting "Catch Without Arms" which is amazing in its own right, I decided to get their other two releases, "El Cielo" and "Leitmotif". Listening through "El Cielo" totally changed my perspective on the band, and while "Catch Without Arms" is really solid with great songs and melodies and "Leitmotif" is on the same level as the other two, "El Cielo" has amazing ambience, beauty, intensity, and atmosphere that transcends almost any rock/metal album I've listened to. Songs like "Same Ol' Road", "Sanzen", and "Of the Room", showcase Gavin Hayes soothing, clear tenor while other songs like "It Only Took A Day and "Whoa is Me" showcase his more intense, soaring vocals. While a vocally-based band, with no really long songs (except for the 20-minute song on their debut, they have only two songs over six minutes) they have many short songs and sections with stunning instrumental breaks, and they atmosphere created behind the vocals shows the genius of the band at creating soundscapes and moods. "Whoa Is Me" has blurbs or sax and trumpet shooting in, and even a breathy tenor saxophone solo at the end, one of my favourite tracks on "El Cielo" for that reason! Also, their lyrics are incredible as you can witness by looking at my signature, below. Their releases are all concept albums, with "El Cielo" talking about sleep paralysis and lucid dreams and the theories surrounding it; "Leitmotif" has a concept based on a man who feels he has a moral disease and travels around the world to cure himself; and "Catch Without Arms" is a collection of songs that deals with the positive and negative sides of many issues, arguements, and ideas, such as reincarnation/death, freedom/order, broken/unbreakable, and logic vs. emotion. Check out an indepth analysis of the albums, band bios, message boards, on www.traversing.net and audio/video samples at www.dredg.com. But for any fans of the band, any opinions/comments/criticism on Dredg?
Yup, I've been a fan of their's for a while now. If you like them, you should check out The Apex Theory... IMO, Dredg and The Apex Theory go hand-in-hand. Edit: The Apex Theory's site is http://www.theapextheory.com/ There are some neat videos in the media section. It reminds me of a Dredg show -- the art involved, that is. Dredg and Apex toured together for a while, but they haven't recently.
I love Catch Without Arms and they were pretty good when I saw them live. But then again, they did come after mewithoutyou which is the worst band I've ever seen live in my entire life.
Yes, Dredg is amazing. In my opinion, definitely one of the best albums to be released this year was Catch Without Arms. I have El Cielo, but I haven't gotten a chance to listen to it, and I had a decent quality live performance from May, but I think I accidentally deleted it. But yeah, I like Dredg.
I heard three of the songs from Leitmotif a while ago. I remember only liking one of them, while the others sounded like Great Escape-era Blur, only even more pretentious and sucky.
Dredg are pretty good. I saw them live when I saw Hoobastank last year they opened it was pretty kick ass.