There is something about war-based death metal that just really works for me. Of course, the first name in this little sub-genre is (and probably always will be) Bolt Thrower, followed by bands like Hail Of Bullets, Memoriam, Warmaster and others. Just Before Dawn are a great band too, though. Hailing from Sweden, they are already on their fourth album. I volunteered to listen to this because I have their 2013 album, “Precis Innan Gryningen”, which was a solid enough platter of death metal.
2020’s version of Just Before Dawn is an absolute beast. Firstly, it’s a slow to medium paced slice of tank-tracked, chunky, rumbling death. The intro, giving off strong Bolt Thrower vibes, gives way to the excellent “To The Last Tiger”. The title track, “An Army at Dawn” starts with an opening riff that really could have been ripped from “…For Victory”. In keeping the heaviness of their attack at a maximum, the band have managed to keep things extreme by in the main keeping the speed to little more than the occasional gallop, but often with an inexorable yet relentless march. The axe work here is chunkier than a double bodied truck towing Yorkie Bars, and the basswork? Not so much a rumble, it’s more like the approaching thud of artillery fire hitting the earth and sending clods of rhythm into your ears. Drumming is also absolutely excellent – while there’s plenty of invention and great double bass work, it’s also approached with some care and control. The drums could easily have run amok in the spaces between the riffs here, but the iron-clad discipline keeps every track advancing just the way they should.
It’s a really doom influenced album too; tracks like “Belaya Smert” have a frozen, melancholy feel to them which is enhanced by the slow, deliberate rumble of the song. Of course, there are times where the tempo speeds up and we get some berserk charge, but for the most part, this is really the sound of an advancing tank battalion. Production wise, this is a really well-crafted album. The heaviness of the song could have been bogged down with murk given the slight bias to the low-end rumble of the bass, but somehow it comes out as powerful and clear, without ever feeling too polished. One of the more interesting approaches the album brings is the amount of guest vocalists who appear on the album – a veritable who’s-who of death metal bands lending their pipes to the proceedings, but never causing the cohesiveness to the sound to falter.
Ralf Hauber – (Revel in Flesh) Vocals on track 1
Matias Nastolin – (Decaying) Vocals on track 2
Jonny Pettersson – (Wombbath / Gods Forsaken / JBD) Vocals on track 3
Daimen Terry – (Envig) Vocals on track 4 and 6
Thomas Clifford – (Abscission) Vocals on track 5
Gustav Myrin – (Gods Forsaken / JBD) Vocals on track 5
David Nilsson – (Feral) Vocals on track 7 and 9
Andreas Stenlund – (HarmDaud) Vocals on track 7
Mattias Parkkila – (Blood Mortized) Vocals on track 8
Robert Karlsson – (Creeping Flesh) Vocals on track 10
I really, really enjoyed my time with this album. It seems to me that the band have understood what it was that made the classic Bolt Thrower albums so magical, and have managed to harness the feel of them without out-and-out aping their sound. It’s also really one of the most listenable and infections death metal albums I have heard in months. Fantastic stuff all round, chaps.
(9/10 Chris Davison)
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