Sgàile – Onward to Embrace the Echo
Release Date: 2nd October 2026
Label: These Hands Melt
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Metal
FFO: Alcest, Dessiderium, Falloch, Cnoc an Tursa, Saor, Dream Theater, Leprous (NOR).
Review By: Malte Brigge
Something is stirring in the musical vision of the Scottish Highlands. In 2026 alone, Cnoc an Tursa released their first album since 2017’s Tony Dunn-helmed The Forty Five, Andy Marshall delivered a third Fuath album along with rerecordings of early Saor material, and James McBain continued his hellgoat assault on everything that’s virtuous and decent. All that’s needed to complete this claymore-wielding Scottish standoff is Tony Dunn himself. Brace for Onwards to Embrace the Echo, his follow-up to 2024’s post-apocalyptic Traverse the Bealach. Traverse didn’t hit me on my initial listen, but revisiting it a few months later saw it enter my rotation and eventually become my #7 of the year. In the end, though, there can be only one. Can Dunn’s progressive project Sgàile call down the lightning to take its rightful place as the… Actually, I have no idea what the Highlander is or why they have to fight. Moving on.
Sgàile traverses wall-of-sonic-soundscapes with massive guitars and impressive vocals. You have to marvel at Dunn’s range of talent—it’s one thing to play every instrument with such precision, it’s one thing to have the creative framework to craft songs that wander but do not get lost, and it’s another entirely to have a voice like that. The man can sing, and on Onwards to Embrace the Echo, he very much embraces the echo of his pipes by weaving polyphonic harmonies around primary melodies that emancipate new melodic foundations. This is immediately evident on Vindicated, but is more apparent and more masterfully performed on centerpiece Watch for the Widowmaker, which wends and weaves until a single bloodline arrows the song into a field full of stars, stunning the watcher into silence and awe. It’s wondrous, and in none of his previous work has he been so vocally ambitious.
Driving guitar frontiers offer a suitable and unsubtle backdrop for those powerful, at times glorious, melodies. Evolving walls of sound rise, reminiscent of a clean Dessiderium, even reminding me of Dream Theater at times in the restless restraint of the riffs and powerful chugging chord patterns. He borrows from across the musical spectrum to develop ideas, from the Celtic guitar leads of Vindicated to the blistering blast beats of Widowmaker to the uplifting, melodic security of the closing title track. Guitars twine with his high, soaring, metallic tenor, reaching points close to implosion, releasing tension in directions that had only been hinted at in secondary and even tertiary harmonic lines. There’s a sophistication in Dunn’s craft for suspension and resolution that’s almost ecological, pulsing with the ebb and flow of the tidal flows that bookend the album.
A variety of instruments lend themselves to the airy, internal landscapes painted here—a piano carefully sprinkles the album at various crucial moments, a vibraphone helps the last notes sink back into the lapping waves, and occasional spacey synth work adds a slightly Spelljammer feel, especially on The Sunset Haze, like wooden arks lifting off on a cosmic journey. There aren’t many solos on the album, but a few guitar leads and occasional ostinatos cinch the songs to their designs and fulfill the rising promise of dramatic, cresting elements. Most notable, though, is the guest appearance of the wraithlike Heike Langhans (Sojourner, ex-Draconian), who lends her diaphanous voice to the role of Dunn’s non-verbal autistic daughter on Senses of an Angel. It matters that their voices never join, an intentionally frustrating choice, and the way her voice quietly takes over his own background choral work, moving with him while remaining apart, intensifies the emotional layers of the song and underscores the hope that lies at the core of the album.
Onwards to Embrace the Echo doesn’t quite reach the heights Traverse the Bealach set, but I’m not sure it’s meant to. Traverse works on a grand, almost mythic scale, whereas Onwards is more about the internal landscape of someone navigating profound, everyday trials. It builds emotional tension for a little too long in places, but always resolves in crescendos that feel genuinely triumphant rather than cheap or saccharine. It isn’t about looking at a world a creative mind has built, but the world that same mind must live in and through, and it presents emotional truths in revelatory, sophisticated ways. This album carries musical layers and dramatic weight; rather than trying to out-epic the previous work, it establishes personal foundations for Sgàile’s future without sacrificing what makes the band special. If there is to be only one, Sgàile submits an excellent claim in the end.
(4 / 5)
