Jordan Clancy - Drums, Percussion
Kevin Handlon - Bass Guitar
Kelly Schilling - Vocals, Guitars, Keys, Synth
Ryan Sims - Vocals, Guitars

DREADNOUGHT is an American progressive metal band from Denver, Colorado, known for an adventurous and highly individual sound that moves freely between progressive metal, doom, black metal, post-metal, folk, jazz and classical music. Rather than allowing themselves to be confined by conventional genre boundaries, Dreadnought have built their identity around experimentation, atmosphere and long-form songwriting, combining moments of extreme heaviness with delicate melodies, expansive instrumental passages and richly layered arrangements.

The band was formed in 2012 by musicians who had already been active together within the Colorado music scene. Guitarist, flutist and vocalist Kelly Schilling, drummer and saxophonist Jordan Clancy, bassist and mandolin player Kevin Handlon, and keyboardist and vocalist Lauren Vieira brought together remarkably diverse musical backgrounds. Schilling, Clancy and Handlon had previously played together in the blackened death metal band Kastigation, while Vieira had been involved with the progressive group Recondite. Their shared interest in extreme metal became the foundation for Dreadnought, but from the beginning the intention was to create something considerably broader and more exploratory.

Dreadnought introduced their distinctive musical world with their debut album, Lifewoven, released in 2013. Already displaying many of the characteristics that would become central to the band, the record combined progressive and extreme metal with acoustic instrumentation, flute, mandolin, saxophone, keyboards and contrasting clean and harsh vocals. Rather than simply combining genres for effect, Dreadnought used these different musical languages to create sweeping compositions built around atmosphere, dynamics and gradual development.

Their second album, Bridging Realms, followed in 2015 and represented another major step in the band's evolution. The group's progressive tendencies became increasingly ambitious, while their ability to move between aggression, introspection and almost cinematic passages grew considerably more assured. Dreadnought were developing a style in which blackened intensity and doom-laden weight could exist alongside jazz, folk, progressive rock and spacious atmospheric sections without sounding artificially assembled.

With A Wake in Sacred Waves in 2017, Dreadnought pushed this approach considerably further. Inspired in part by the relationship between nature and music, the album presented some of the band's most expansive material to that point. Black metal eruptions, heavy guitars and forceful percussion were contrasted with flute, mandolin, saxophone, keyboards and haunting vocal harmonies. The result strengthened Dreadnought's reputation as a band capable of creating genuinely progressive music without abandoning the power and darkness of extreme metal.

The darker side of the band became even more pronounced on their fourth full-length, Emergence, released through Profound Lore Records in 2019. Built around themes of fire, destruction, transformation and rebirth, the album used the destructive and regenerative properties of flame as a metaphor for the human condition. Musically, Emergence was heavier and more ominous than its predecessors while retaining the intricate instrumentation and wide dynamic range that had become Dreadnought trademarks. Massive doom passages, black metal intensity, progressive structures and quieter atmospheric sections were woven into lengthy compositions that often felt more like journeys than conventional songs.

That same year Dreadnought also released It Took the Flood, originally appearing as part of Adult Swim's Metal Swim 2 compilation. By this stage, the group had established itself as one of the more unusual voices to emerge from Colorado's already diverse heavy-music underground.

Three years later Dreadnought returned with their fifth studio album, The Endless, released by Profound Lore Records in August 2022. The album retained the melodic grandeur of Lifewoven and Bridging Realms and the darker complexities of A Wake in Sacred Waves and Emergence, while introducing a noticeably refreshed approach to songwriting and production.

Conceptually, The Endless also represented a change. Where the band's previous records had often dealt with more abstract themes, the album explored the division between light and suffering within human existence and the choices that shape both individual lives and the wider world. Songs such as “Worlds Break,” “Midnight Moon,” “Gears of Violent Endurance” and “The Paradigm Mirror” moved through post-apocalyptic imagery, manipulation, despair, primal instinct and the possibility of escaping destructive cycles. Musically, synthesizers assumed an increasingly important role alongside the band's familiar combination of progressive structures, heavy grooves, extreme-metal aggression and ethereal atmosphere.

Dreadnought continued their willingness to venture beyond their own catalogue in 2025 with a reinterpretation of Nine Inch Nails' “The Becoming,” originally from The Downward Spiral. Rather than being an unexpected diversion, the choice suited a band whose music had always existed somewhere between organic instrumentation, progressive experimentation, darkness and atmosphere.

The next chapter of Dreadnought would reveal an even more substantial transformation. Working with producer Julius Mauranen, whose credits include work with Finnish psychedelic black metal innovators Oranssi Pazuzu, the band began developing Wars of Spirit // Wards of Light. The material represents a newly focused incarnation of Dreadnought, incorporating synthesizers and electronic textures more deeply into the group's music while moving toward a more direct yet still adventurous form of songwriting.

The band has described this new approach as “World Building Metal Ethera” – an appropriate phrase for music designed not merely as a collection of songs but as an immersive world of its own. Themes surrounding technological dystopia, human creativity and the struggle to preserve the hand-made and heart-driven elements of the human spirit form part of this new era, while Dreadnought's characteristic sense of grandeur, conflict and exploration remains intact.

Throughout their career, Dreadnought have resisted easy categorisation. Progressive metal may provide the broadest description, but it only begins to explain a sound that incorporates elements of black metal, doom, post-metal, progressive rock, folk, jazz, chamber music and increasingly electronic music. Clean and harsh vocals coexist with flute, saxophone, mandolin, keyboards and synthesizers, while delicate passages can gradually develop into enormous walls of sound.

That refusal to remain stylistically stationary has become one of Dreadnought's defining characteristics. Each album has represented another stage in an ongoing evolution rather than a repetition of what came before. From the organic and exploratory beginnings of Lifewoven, through the increasingly ambitious Bridging Realms and A Wake in Sacred Waves, the fiery darkness of Emergence and the existential scope of The Endless, Dreadnought have continually expanded the boundaries of their own musical language.

More than a decade after their formation, Dreadnought remain an unusually difficult band to classify – and that is precisely where much of their appeal lies. Heavy without being restricted to metal, progressive without relying on convention, and experimental without sacrificing emotional impact, Dreadnought have created a body of work in which beauty and brutality, nature and technology, darkness and light continually collide.

Lifewoven (2013)
Bridging Realms (2015)
A Wake in Sacred Waves (2017)
Emergence (2019)
The Endless (2022)
Wars Of Spirit // Wards Of Light (2026)

Progressive Metal/Atmospheric Folk Metal
United States