Just Before Dawn - The Dead and Those About to Die

JUST BEFORE DAWN - The Dead and Those About to Die (CHAOS Records CD 2015 / TILL YOU FUKKIN BLEED MC 2015)

So, two albums behind and Anders Biazzi continues his World War Two conceptual death metal slaughter with another Just Before Dawn recording, which is an EP called “The Dead and Those About to Die”. The CD again came through Chaos Records, while the tape version was released on Till You Fukkin Bleed – and I am happy that I grabbed both of them ha! They do differ a bit from each other, with different cover art and more so, the tape has one extra song, which is a demo song for the upcoming third full length (and is nicely announced by Jonny Pettersson haha). I am not gonna say much about this bonus track though, let’s leave it till the album is out. The EP contains five songs and let’s stick to this.

And well, “The Dead and Those About to Die” is pretty much what you should expect from Just Before Dawn and is a continuation of the previous albums, without any experimentations, but also without a strongly noticeable progression. It’s the same stylistically and quality wise death metal which I would call Bolt Thrower played in the Swedish way and mixed up with a lot of Amon Amarth. That’s the best description for Just Before Dawn, in my opinion. All songs are slow or mid paced, with a strong melodic base and the monumental, kind of epic feeling, almost mournful and dignified. And yes, quality wise it’s again very solid and enjoyable material and like I was saying about the previous album, this EP is also nothing spectacular and tremendously exciting, but just good stuff that is worth listening to. And death metal fans will like it for sure. I do like it a lot of course!

On my review of “Aftermath” album I wrote that there’s one thing that I think works against Just Before Dawn and it’s the huge similarity between all the songs. You know, if each track is played with the same kind of melody and riffage, same tempos and maybe just the vocals change as they use different vocalists, then the feeling of monotony is inevitable. And Anders knows my opinion on this already haha! But on shorter releases like this EP it’s not a major problem, five epic songs go fast and I enjoyed them all really. “Graves Without Crosses” or “Counterbattery” are probably the titles that I remembered the most, but these songs are really fine. I like the melodies and the heaviness combined in the Bolt Throwerish way, especially in “Outnumbered”. I also like the production… yeah, there’s nothing really wrong about “The Dead and Those About to Die”, except maybe the fact that it is just repeating what was done on the previous albums. But does it disturb me at all? I guess I was not bothered at all and was playing this EP so many times in past few days that even my wife knows it by now haha. So, I am looking forward for Just Before Dawn’s third album, for which I already seen some killer vocalists will participate.

Standout track: “Outnumbered”

Final rate: 75/100