Awake & Dreaming go big on their long-awaited debut album ‘Inevitable’

Awake & Dreaming sound like a band with absolutely no interest in making a tentative debut. ‘Inevitable’ arrives with huge guitars, stark piano, electronic tension and a clear appetite for drama, turning ten songs about survival, self-preservation and staying emotionally awake into something genuinely widescreen.

The Canadian quartet’s greatest strength here is their command of innovation and variety. One moment, Sasha Kristoff’s voice is hanging almost alone over piano; the next, Stefan Schneider, Phil Lee and Ryan Dugal are throwing up walls of distortion around her. Those shifts give the album a real sense of lift, making the quieter sections feel more intimate and the heavier passages hit considerably harder.

‘Underwater’ is a perfect example of this direction. Built around the feeling of being swallowed by the things you refuse to release, it begins from a place of isolation and gradually grows into something vast. The track feels suspended between panic and surrender, with the band turning that emotional pressure into one of the album’s most striking moments.

There are shades of Muse in the ambition and AURORA in the more ethereal passages, but they rarely sound content to simply echo their influences. They take those reference points and push them through their own more theatrical, emotionally charged approach.

The sequencing also gives the record added weight. Beginning in a place of feeling trapped and mechanised, the album slowly moves toward a more expansive sense of possibility. It’s a deliberate arc of progression, which suits a band clearly thinking beyond individual tracks.

Jay Dufour’s mixing and João Carvalho’s mastering give that ambition the space it needs, allowing the record to move from a fragile confession to full-band catharsis without losing its clarity.

In all, ‘Inevitable’ is bold, restless and full of scale. More importantly, it sounds like the work of a band that already understands how to make vulnerability feel enormous. For a debut album, that makes Awake & Dreaming remarkably difficult to ignore.

Awake & Dreaming’s ‘Inevitable’ will be available to stream from October 16th.