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"Epic sludge riffage and hallucinatory fervor..." - Entertainment Weekly
"The progressive modulation of hard rock penetrates your eardrums like an Ampeg hurled at you from a sixth floor balcony" - Anthem
"Darkly hypnotic...a chaotic psychmetal brew." - Guitar World
Although Danava (pronounced DON-UH-VUH) play the type of ferociously intense, foundation-rattling, rock and roll that might righteously justify some good old fashioned head-banging, vocalist Dusty Sparkles wants you to know that he doesn’t consider his band a metal outfit.
Nor are they prog-rock, or part of whatever ridiculous, wonky sounding “movement” someone just came up with to try to lump a bunch of disparate bands together. Sparkles has as much use for genre tags as folks on the Titanic did for bottled water. He’s not interested in being part of a scene, and he’s entirely unconcerned about anyone’s reaction to or opinion of his band.
“We’re not trying to fit in anywhere specifically,” he drawls nonchalantly. “we aren’t going to do this unless we feel happy about it.”
Danava might create music for themselves, but they’ve connected with an audience hungry for something intelligent, interesting, complex – and heavy. A short three years after forming somewhat casually in Portland, the band is gearing up to release their second LP on Kemado Records, titled UnonoU.
“UnonoU is a word I made up,” explains Sparkles.
“People should think for themselves [as to its deeper meaning]. I hate being specific. It’s boring.” 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.
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.
That’s the genius behind Danava – four musicians who strive to combine creativity and musical skills in unique and unpredictable ways. Maybe the only thing it’s safe to expect is that whatever comes next will be as much a surprise to the band as it will be to its fans.
