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BEFORE THE DAWN :
MY DARKNESS

Finland, it's a virtual wellspring of Gothic Metal. Without the fantastic music pouring out of this great land I don't know what I'd be listening to right now. I do know however, that my credit card bills would be a lot lower. It's the land that brings us greatness such as the 69 Eyes, Sentenced, To/Die/For, Entwine, Rapture, Charon, Poisonblack, and H.I.M., just to name a few. Well now we can add "Before The Dawn" to the list, and not at the bottom either, these guys are shooting right to the top of the pile and the front of the line. The band is; Panu Willman - guitar / clean voice, Tuomas Saukkonen - guitar / dark voice, Toni Broman - bass, Dani Miettinen - drums, and Jarkko Mannikko - keyboards (replaced by Mika Ojala after this recording). The music can best be described as a mixture of Sentenced, Crematory, early Katatonia, and Shades Of God / Icon era Paradise Lost. Then you can just add the smallest dash of In Flames, and you have what could be the next Finnish super group! The band started out in 1999 as a solo project for Tuomas, but soon exploded into a full-blown band. In 2001 they released a 6-track mini CD called "Gehenna", but this is the first full-length effort. This disc is simply brilliant, dark, melodic, moody, and yet not afraid to come out with the almost Death-Metal style harsh vocals and double bass drum attack when needed. Make no doubt about it, this is a Metal band. The 2 vocal styles employed are rather interesting, the clean vocals make up the bulk of each song, while the harsher vocals mostly make their appearance during the choruses. This is of course the exact opposite style utilized by the hundreds of lame-ass Nu/Rap-Metal bands flowing out of the US. What else needs to be said? Just go get this disc, it will knock you clean off your feet on the first spin, and then still continue to improve with each subsequent listen, a fantastic piece of music. For more info, you can find these dark lads on line at, you guessed it, beforethedawn.com.
RATING = 9 Goth-Metal (Released 2003)

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"Greatest hits albums are for housewives and little girls."
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