Generally speaking, the third album for a band is when they really start to define who they are and what their mission is. Depending on the drummer of music, it can often involve (to some extent) musicians experimenting upon an already established formula. History is littered with musicians that operate in this way – OK Computer, White Pony, Black Market Music, Master Of Puppets, Aquemini – quite often, it’s an artistic statement that ends up being amongst their most prolific output.
Released on July 14th, 2017, Dayseeker’s third album sought to both escalate things from a musical perspective as well as increase their fanbase. It achieved both. Dreaming Is Sinking // Waking Is Rising might have a lengthy album title, but the band’s third record is anything but pretentious. Compared to Dayseeker’s previous two albums, it benefits from better production quality thanks to Josh Schroeder, but also includes some of the band’s most compelling songs to that date.
In fact, there’s a lot of emotional turmoil evident in the songwriting, and that’s very obvious on songs like “Vultures” and “Abandon”. Particular importance has to be given to vocalist Rory Rodriguez, whose talent is off the charts. And the topics covered tell various stories, too. Absolute venom is all over “Vultures”, which concerns a friend of the band who was a victim of sexual assault. And thankfully, the rest of the album exhibits most of the same confidence as the aforementioned tracks, so it’s not particularly surprising that this is the album that started Dayseeker on the path to the popularity they have now.
“This song is not only the start of our album, but it’s also written for our dear friend who was a victim of sexual assault. This is a huge issue that we wanted to write about, not only to bring to light the trauma a person goes through when this happens, but to hopefully offer solace to those same people, as well.”
