Another metal disaster
Sometimes I think I’m a bit too old for all this metal malarkey. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not quite at the pipe and slippers stage yet, listening to some musty Noel Coward records on a gramophone for entertainment in my evenings, but feel completely removed from modern metal at the moment. It’s all become about: who is the darkest; who is the heaviest; who has the largest penis size. Well, maybe not penis size, but I’m pretty positive it is only a matter of time before they are collectively wapping them out and measuring them, taking an average of each band and creating some league of manliness to stop all this madness.
The point that I’m getting at is that they all are trying to out do each other and its showing.
The Final Dawn is the usual metal fare: detuned guitars played heavily; unintelligible lyrics gutturally growled out over the patter-patter-patter of drum beats and the usual lyrical fare of triumph over adversity. Oh, and quite a bit of talk about horses: There probably is some symbolism there if you wanted to look for it, probably something about battles. But that is about it: they aren’t delivering anything else and nothing sounds new or different. This could be any band or any album if you didn’t have a vague awareness of the scene: there is nothing to differentiate from any other metal band, save for a small nod to melody.
Although the album undoubtedly employs a little more tunefulness than other bands of their ilk, which is momentarily refreshing during the listen, but, there is still nothing to grab you by the throat and say that this is an album which is worthy of repeated listens. It doesn’t have anything new to say and certainly doesn’t sound original. Lazy and let’s face it, quite accurate comparisons can be made to the band sounding like the Sepultura, Slayer and At the Gates’ of this world. Although the three aforementioned bands are respected and revered as they all have produced era and scene defining material, we already have those bands: we need something new.
This isn’t the most terrible listen in the world, but it is certainly not brimming with new ideas or a fresh take on the metal scene: perhaps it is because metal music is so limited now as all the boundaries have been pushed; perhaps it is because Arise and Ruin haven’t tried hard enough or perhaps it is the fact that I’m getting old.