Just Before Dawn - On the History of Destruction

JUST BEFORE DAWN - On the History of Destruction (DARK SYMPHONIES - CD 2017)

Let's check another Just Before Dawn's recent release, this time it's a CD titled "On the History of Destruction", released by Dark Symphonies. It's sort of compilation, which contains the recent EP "The Ghosts of the Eastern Front" plus a whole bunch of new, unreleased songs. There are ten songs in total, with almost one hour of sorrowful and epic death metal on the clock. Quite a lot, but I have to say that I've listened to this album with great pleasure and enjoyed its every moment. 

I believe that you are already familiar with Just Before Dawn music. I have written about it and described it in details several times. I hope I was able to recommend it to you and that you managed to grab some of their recordings. To keep things short, let me remind you that Just Before Dawn is a project of Anders Biazzi, who - together with several other musicians invited for every recording – creates a stunning epic death metal. This music is filled with sorrowful melodies, monumental riffs, it has almost mournful atmosphere... It's just incredibly epic, heavy, quite slow-paced death metal, which can remind you bands such as Hypocrisy, Bolt Thrower, Amon Amarth, Hail of Bullets, Unleashed and so on. Good thing about this album and Just Before Dawn in general is that despite the slow, doomy tempo and the melodic accents, the music isn't boring. Sure, there are better and little worse songs, like everywhere else, but the average quality is great. And some of the fragments on this CD are simply stunning, especially the song titled "The Ghosts of the Eastern Front" is truly fantastic, I like it a lot. But such "As Death Breaks the Surface" and "7th Patrol" are also among my favourites. This album is very easy to get into, there are many memorable riffs, all vocalists who were invited did great job also (Rai Walters from Departed Souls, Jonny Pettersson from Wombbath, Matias Nastolin from Decaying, Marc Niederhagemann from Lifeless, David Nilsson from Feral)… You can only hear that the production quality differs between some songs, especially for the last two tracks – which are not even mentioned in the tracklist – where the sound doesn't seem to be as heavy and powerful as it's on some of the other songs. But it doesn't disturb, especially for song like "7th Patrol", which is just killer. 

On top of everything, there are two killer cover tunes, which I think simply kill. First, there's Hail of Bullets' "Operation Eastward" - very well played, keeping the song in pretty much the same vein as original, without making it even tiny different. Which is good, because I like this song the way it is. It's real fuckin crusher and beast of the song, so why changing it? And Jonny Pettersson from Wombbath did great vocals for it. The second cover is even more worthy. It's called "We Will Remember Them... (A Tribute)" and it's a medley of some of the best riffs and song parts of the mighty Bolt Thrower, compiled into one, twelve minutes long song. What a killer idea and great performance, with just many classic riffs, which we all love. Petterson, Dave Rotten and Brynjar Helegtune did vocals for it and they obviously did good job. I truly like this idea as well and the final result is just fuckin sweet. 

Standout tracks: "The Ghosts of the Eastern Front", "As Death Breaks the Surface", "We Will Remember Them... (A Tribute)", "7th Patrol" 

Final rate: 80/100