In My Grave…Silence, the third full-length from Portland’s Dolven, arrives this Friday, June 13, through Fiadh Productions (CD and cassette), Winding Stair Records (vinyl), and the band’s own digital channels. The album presents seven tracks—four songs and three instrumentals—built entirely around acoustic instrumentation. It’s doom in texture and pacing, but devoid of distortion, relying on mood, space, and tension.
Led by Nick Wusz (Travellers Rest), Dolven features contributions from Jason Walton (Agalloch, Moonbladder, Sculptured), Hunter Ginn (Canvas Solaris, Radical Research), and Jori Apedaile (Eneferens, Hyalithe). The engineering was handled by Walton at Earth In Sound, with mixing and mastering by Dan Swanö (Opeth, Katatonia, Bloodbath) at Unisound. The record’s visual identity comes via Alexandr and Thaumaturge Artworks, leaning into a medieval and somber tone that mirrors the music’s austerity.
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Heavy Blog Is Heavy described the band’s approach as “intimate, folk-inspired heaviness” that is “comfortable, established,” with “each beat exactly where it needs to be.” It’s a fitting description for a work that feels stripped to the bone emotionally and musically. There’s no adornment here—just what’s necessary to convey the weight of each theme.
Nick Wusz provides a track-by-track commentary that reveals the core focus of the album: aging, grief, solitude, and the confrontation with irrelevance and entropy.
Across the album, personal reflection meets quiet devastation, not through spectacle but through quiet resignation. Check out the official word below.
1. Sun Bleached Stones… This song is about the sorrow I feel every year visiting my fathers grave. As the years go by, the tombs and stones surrounding my father’s plot are being absorbed by moss, bleached by the sun, and yet it is exactly the same as it is every time I visit. I am struck by how in the very near future, I will be in the ground too. The cycle repeats itself. Another year gone by.
2. Beside Me… an instrumental that evokes feelings of loved ones and friends who have died…they are still with us, they are still part of us, they are constantly there….always beside me.
3. You’ve Chosen… This is a song about the confusion of growing older, of having to be mature in a world that is slowly beating us to death. Many people struggle with vulnerability and deflation of the ego, leading them to being alone, bitter, and wondering why the world treated them so shitty. The older I get, the more I realize people don’t change…this saddens me deeply.
4. Standing Among the Ruins…. this song is another instrumental, this time about the “eye of the storm”…the peace that we feel when there is complete chaos around us. The world is disintegrating, yet I feel at peace…that is a strange feeling.
5. Just Like all the Rest… as I grow older, my disdain for organized religion grows stronger. This song is about the demise of these institutions and how irrelevant they are to me in the modern world. We are better off without them, in my opinion.
6. Anymore… this song is about feeling exhausted by over analysis of a personal issue. Sometimes I need to give myself room to think, to sort out the issues slowly. For me, talking about it doesn’t always result in clarity. Often I just need time to breathe, to give myself space, and the solution to whatever problem I am going through arises from that.
7. Seeking Solace… an instrumental piece meant to keep me calm and collected. I am constantly seeking solitude and serenity(I am mostly unsuccessful), but this song brings me closer to those feelings.
