REVIEW: Echoes Of Theia - Moonwake

A collision of darkness and creation, Moonwake turns personal devastation into expansive Cascadian metal. The project ECHOES OF THEIA takes its conceptual foundation from the giant impact hypothesis that roughly 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized body collided with Earth, the resulting debris eventually forming the Moon. Scientists have even investigated possible chemical “echoes” of primordial Earth that may have survived that cataclysm deep within the planet. On Moonwake, Washington multi-instrumentalist Greg Dunbar takes that cosmic idea and turns it inwards. The album is about destruction and reconstruction on a profoundly human scale: self-annihilation, addiction, grief, mental health struggles, reflection, and ultimately the difficult work of healing. If Theia represents a collision that destroyed one configuration of matter while creating something new, the opus asks a similar question of the human experience: What can emerge from a wreckage?

The answer is an ambitious and remarkably cohesive eight-track album. Dunbar composed, performed, recorded, and mixed the bulk of Moonwake himself in his home studio, with guest vocalists from Olympia contributing to the record. The instrumentation stretches well beyond the conventional metal palette, incorporating orchestral, folk and electronic elements. The resulting soundscape is something that can be brutally heavy one moment and almost weightless the next. It continually moves between tranquillity and tempest, atmosphere and impact, melody and dissonance. The Cascadian metal influence is unmistakable but Dunbar doesn’t reproduce a familiar formula. He builds enormous, layered soundscapes around the songs, allowing the darkness to breathe.

The album begins with Horizonless, an eerie instrumental that feels less like entering another environment. There is a sense of witnessing creation from a distance, something vast beginning to take shape in the darkness. It establishes the album's cosmic and cinematic character before the first real impact arrives with That Sinking Feeling. Distorted guitars immediately make the album feel heavier and more frantic. The instrumentation is hectic while guttural, torn vocals communicate desperation with little restraint. As the track develops, clear singing begins to infiltrate the brutality, creating a fascinating tension between collapse and the possibility of recovery. Then, roughly three-quarters of the way through, everything suddenly stops when a piano appears. For a moment, the listener finds stillness in the middle of the storm. It is one of the album's most effective moments because the near silence feels earned. When the vocals and heavier instrumentation come crashing back in, the impact is considerably greater. The song becomes a musical representation of holding onto hope by one's fingertips while everything else threatens to disappear.

Gravity shifts the emotional terrain again. An acoustic opening and distant, dreamlike voices create an almost weightless atmosphere before the guitars descend into a languished doom heaviness. There is an exhaustion to the track, a sensation of trying to move forward through quicksand while being unable to see a clear path. The layered backing vocals are particularly effective, hovering around the main singing track like memories or hallucinations, reinforcing the dreamlike quality and giving the song the feeling of chasing something that may not actually be within reach. There are moments that evoke the oppressive melancholy of bands such as SWALLOW THE SUN while maintaining its own identity through its broad atmospheric palette.

From there, Deluge of Fire pushes further towards death metal. The rhythms become more aggressive and the vocals more ferocious, but the doom influence remains as an underlying thread. It is an impressive example of how naturally Dunbar moves between genres without making the album feel fragmented. The guitar work is especially evocative: rapid, bullet-like, creating the sensation of being caught underneath the very deluge described by the title. It is overwhelming without being directionless, and the contrast with the previous track makes the escalation feel deliberate.

Then comes Depth Gauge, the album's longest composition at 8:29 and arguably one of its most ambitious. The guitars sound almost tortured, as if the strings themselves are screaming while the vocals are chant-like. The echoed back vocals strengthen the impression that we've stumbled into some kind of ritual or invocation.

Whitecap Sky introduces more noticeable electronic undertones while maintaining the album's emotional weight. Its pacing suggests effort: not triumph, but the exhausting act of continuing to fight. There is no easy catharsis here. Recovery is presented as work, and sometimes simply continuing forward is the victory. The Brush of Fingers offers one of the album's most surprisingly catchy instrumentals without compromising the darkness. Clear and growled vocals seem to answer one another. That interplay becomes another expression of Moonwake's central tension: opposing forces that don't necessarily need to destroy each other. Sometimes they coexist.

Finally, we reach Nocturne of Storm which brings the journey full circle. Its instrumental opening echoes the beginning of the album, but a wind chime now enters the picture, subtly changing the atmosphere. It feels like an announcement: new winds are coming. The track then grows heavier, incorporating elements heard throughout the record like speed, ritualistic vocals, echoes and electronic textures. It functions as an effective summary of the album  but also stands on its own. It carries a sense of transformation that is deeply meaningful taking into account the mental health, addiction and grief topics approached in the release. 

The creation of this high-concept album is also deeply documented and made available to the audience, letting them in fully. The 127 pages digital booklet Into The Maelstrom, provides production information for every song alongside Dunbar's personal context for the music and lyrics as well as photographs taken during the recording sessions. All combined makes the album a thorough thinking, deliberate and polished release. The production gives its many layers enough room to coexist rather than compete with one another.

Moonwake’s greatest strength is the way its musical contrasts mirror its subject matter where beauty emerges from ugliness, calm exists inside chaos, and melody fights its way through dissonance. It leaves us with a much more intimate question: what do we build from the pieces of ourselves that survive? Take the time to look within by catching this release on August 14th.

Score: 8/10

Moonwake will be released on 14th August 2026.

Words: Lysandre Pons

Photos: Matt Baide