Danava

“UnonoU is a word I made up,” explains guitarist and lead singer Dusty Sparkles. “People should think for themselves [as to its deeper meaning]. I hate being specific. It’s boring.” This is in reference to the new album What’s not boring is much of anything about Danava’s densely-packed musical ideas and unstoppable live show, which kick down the doors of genre, clique, and scene.

Danava’s road-tightened aggression belies years of absorbing influence and spiritual journeying, the same journey that led three of Danava’s four members from central Illinois to Portland, Oregon, where they call home. “There wasn’t much happening when we got here,” guitarist/vocalist Dusty Sparkles said about his 2001 move out West. “But now we feel we’re a part of a really great thing.” As if in praise, the majority of UnonoU’s seven songs speak to an awakening brought on by the experiences the band has endured thus far, on and off the stage. “These songs are about self-discovery,” Sparkles illustrates. “Stop lying to yourself. Quit being afraid of change. Accept yourself. Stop believing everything you read or see on TV, and ask yourself how you really feel.”

Part of the excitement of Danava and their music is witnessing it all unfold. Songs that would seem like stunts on paper leverage stylistic shifts, tempo changes, and expressive instrumental virtuosity to where it sounds as natural as conversation. Leaner, more at ease with its daunting, hyper-complex countenance, Danava’s music now possesses a smirking confidence both hard-fought and well-worn. You’ll hear it all over UnonoU. In the Cream-like interstitials of bassist Dell Blackwell on “Where Beauty and Terror Dance.” In Sparkles’ brazen, polyrhythmic synth leads that start “The Emerald Snow of Sleep” with a frigid, signal-lost pall of autonomous desperation – one which surges to life with a barrage of metallic force, recedes into pinballing Moog bass, and revives itself in a righteous blaze. In the relentless leads of “Spinning Temple Shifting,” and the theatrical doom of “Down from a Cloud, Up from the Ground.” Those string and horn arrangements you didn’t expect to hear today flesh out the album with a degree of sophistication unexpected in this kind of rock. Through it all, Sparkles is blessed with a familiar, hectoring tenor, and he really knows how to project, even in those higher registers.

Sparkles credits the expanse in Danava’s sound to an improved recording situation. “On our first album, we felt really rushed, under the gun to produce something great in time for release,” he explains. “With UnonoU, things worked much more at the speed which we’re comfortable with.” Recorded in Kemado’s NYC studio facilities, the group had plenty of time to experiment with new ideas, and flesh out songs in the recording environment.

Danava reaches back to the whole of a musical history beyond metal, and fuses the results into a cohesive end result. “It’s hard to stand out,” Sparkles confesses. “What matters to us is that we can say we’re doing our own thing.”