Dusk

During their short-lived run in the mid-1990s, the Green Bay, Wisconsin outfit Dusk produced some of the most abrasive and unyielding material to emerge within doom and death metal circles. Their refusal to compromise kept them confined to underground acclaim right up until the group dissolved. Origins trace to the early 1990s, when Steve Crane, handling vocals and bass, joined forces with Steve Gross on guitar and keyboards; both drew heavily from early doom and death trailblazers such as England’s Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride as well as New York’s Winter. Once Tim Beyer joined on second guitar and Ron Heemstra took the drum seat, the quartet issued two self-released efforts in rapid order: a self-titled debut in 1994 followed by Majestic Thou in Ruin the next year. These recordings placed them in the company of equally obscure yet devoted American doom acts, among them Morgion from California, Chicago’s Novembers Doom, and New Jersey’s Evoken. Internal tensions between Crane and Gross eventually fractured the lineup; by the time Dusk resurfaced on the 1998 compilation Visionaries of the Macabre, Vol. 1 with the track “Yearning for Eternity,” a different vocalist and bassist had already stepped in. Several additional demos cut in 1997 surfaced eight years afterward, long after the band had folded.