If you follow me, you’ll know I always get a wee thrill when Sonic Cathedral announce something new. This is my second Sonic Cathedral review in a single week, I don’t know how Nat does it but he just has a knack for finding bands who excite and challenge me in equal measure. That was enough to make me curious about East London trio Adele Dazeem before I even had a listen.
Charlie Hearl, Philippe O’Connor and Frank Andrews have been together since forming in 2020, and you can hear that steady evolution in every corner of their sound. The name itself comes from that infamous John Travolta moment, but they’ve turned a misread joke into something meaningful, a prompt to explore identity, ego and the parts of ourselves we dodge or distort.
Let’s see what this EP sounds like.
‘Misère’ snaps the EP into life with tension that never quite settles. The guitars flicker around the rhythm section, sharp and restless, and the vocals float above it all like a spectral sound. Then it kicks in and we’re off. This is some pacy, dark gaze and I’m immediately hooked. Apparently, the song is named for a self-sabotaging play in cards, one where you attempt to lose every hand. That said this track is a winner and gets us off to a cracking start.
Up next ‘Deep Sea Hand’ takes that same pressure and pulls you under. The song stretches out across nearly seven minutes, but never once loses its grip on you. The band use the time to build a slow rising wave of emotion, starting with something muted and buried, then letting it swell until it hits a moment of release that feels earned. When the tempo lifts after the midway point it’s like coming back to the surface after realising how long you’ve been holding everything in. It’s a gorgeous piece of writing, full of small details that reward you when you go back for a second listen.
‘Mezanin’ feels like a reckoning point. There’s a kind of clarity in the way the band lock into a steady, unblinking groove. The motorik guitar tones smear and hum, the drums stay patient, and the vocals move between detachment and something rawer. It mirrors the EP’s theme of facing the parts of yourself you’d rather tuck away, and it lands with real weight.
The title track ‘Metanoia’ ties the whole journey together. Hearl has this to say.
“That is a fragile song, made up of many phases of anger, patience, love and acceptance towards ourselves and others. The EP closes in a kind of exasperated clarity. A final call to recognise how easily our past haunts the present, and how urgently we must meet it, if we want to truly change our mind.”
There’s a glow to the song that is felt in every second of its run time. The band lean into atmosphere without losing their footing, giving it space to breathe and expand. It closes the EP with the quiet confidence of a group who know exactly what they want to say, and aren’t afraid to sit in the darker corners to get there.
Adele Dazeem have made something really special here. The Metanoia EP feels like a real statement of intent. Like they’re saying this is who we are. Each track pushes a different part of you forward and by the time the title track lands, you totally get it. You totally get it and want to join them. It’s the sound of a band stepping into their own story with purpose and conviction, and if this is their first chapter, I can only imagine where they go from here.
Metanoia EP is out now via Sonic Cathedral. You can check it out over on the Adele Dazeem Bandcamp page.
You can follow Adele Dazeem on social media here…
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