Before the Dawn-Deathstar Rising

Before the Dawn is one of the reasons that I am truly proud to be half Finnish. I’ve been fascinated by their music ever since the release of Soundscape of Silence. I think I first heard about them when I saw Arch Enemy; their drummer was wearing a Before the Dawn shirt and told me to look them up. The main thing that I’ve noticed about this band is that these guys are one of the only bands where their music gets better each album, the only other bands that I can think of at the moment that are like that are Soilwork, Lamb of God, Eternal Tears of Sorrow, Born of Osiris, and Decapitated.

The thing that’s interesting about these guys is that they are similar to Amorphis not only because they’re also Finnish, but because they have a nice blend of power metal and melodic death. In the second song on the album, you can definitely hear the power metal sound in the music part, and the death metal growls to put the icing on the cake. Before the Dawn really decided that it was time to start exploring different areas of metal, because for three consecutive albums they’ve pretty much kept the same general sound. And I think the best example of that sound is Soundscape of Silence. The areas of music that I can hear that sound new in their music is a lot more power metal, some soft and acoustic progressive rock, and even some traditional heavy metal here and there. The one thing that I would change about these guys is I would turn the growls down and octave or two. I’m a huge fan of really deep, powerful growls. Some bands with good growls I’d like to mention are Opeth, Scar Symmetry, The Faceless, and Fleshgod Apocalypse.

This is one of the albums where I haven’t really paid attention to the song names and which song is what. More so, I’ve just been listening to the album straight through, and thinking of the music as all one whole thing, not individual songs. That’s what I do with most of the albums I listen to; I rarely choose an individual song unless I’m introducing a band to someone else. Otherwise I just choose and album and play it straight through on shuffle. But I will say that I am a huge fan of Winter Within. Mainly due to the deeper growls and the faster tempos. But that aside, this is undoubtedly the best melodic death album of 2011, 19/20.