Dagoba

Dagoba, a metal outfit hailing from France that performs exclusively in English, built a dedicated European audience in the middle of the 2000s through successive releases on the subterranean metal imprint Season of Mist. The group came together in Marseille during 1997 and draws from the nü-metal movement of that period—particularly Korn, Deftones, and Incubus—while also incorporating the aggression of death metal. Its lineup consists of Shawter on vocals, Izakar on guitar, Werther on bass, and Franky on drums. The quartet issued its first commercial recording, the six-track EP Release the Fury, in 2001 through the independent outlet Enternote Records. Two years later the same label put out the full-length Dagoba, after which the musicians spent the bulk of the following twenty-four months on the road as support for Machine Head, Fear Factory, and Korn. Persistent touring led to a 2005 contract with Season of Mist; the resulting What Hell Is About, issued in 2006 and helmed by producer Tue Madsen, cracked the French albums chart at number 107. Madsen returned for the follow-up Face the Colossus in 2008, another strong seller that enabled Dagoba to headline its own European trek across 2008–2009. Poseidon surfaced in 2010 on XIII Bis Records, with Post Mortem Nihil Est appearing in 2013 and Tales of the Black Dawn in 2015. Prior to the 2018 arrival of the seventh studio album Black Nova, the band signed with Century Media.