A few years ago, Sylvain Spanu left the French metal band Blackout. In 2017 he announced the forming of a new band, The Dawn Razor, which released its full-length debut, titled Renaissances, on March 9th. Sylvain himself describes The Dawn Razor's music as sublime metal.
Starting with opening track Lisboa 1755, Renaissances immediately is very up-tempo. The tempo will mostly stay pretty high, despite quite a few rhythm-variations in this album. So, if you need some points of rest in the coming 46 minutes and you want to hear Renaissances in one complete take, you’d better listen to it another time.
As mentioned earlier, the musical style of The Dawn Razor is sublime metal. But what is sublime metal exactly? According to the accompanying press kit it is a mix of black and death inspirations. I surely recognize these influences in the instrumental part of Renaissances as well as in the vocals (the screams are very black metal-like). However, I also hear some other musical influences on Renaissances. For example, the song-structures and guitar-riffs sometimes sound a bit prog- or groove-influenced, not both at the same time, but on different moments on Renaissances. The clean vocals also sound fitted for some groove metal at times. These clean vocals however are not exactly to my liking. In my opinion they sound a bit forced and sometimes a bit emotionless.
Of course, sublime metal is still just a description of their music. You have to listen to Renaissances to decide whether you dig The Dawn Razor's music or not. Like mentioned before, instrumentally Renaissances has quite a few rhythm-variations. This is what makes Renaissances the most interesting, together with the many variations of the most important instrument on this album. Which instrument that is? Of course I am talking about the guitar, Renaissances is very guitar-driven. High guitars as well as the heavier riffs are present on this album, just as some very nice guitar-solo's in, for example, Weapon Dealers, Childish Whims or Fake Paranoia. The solo in the latter one giving a bit more of a melodic touch to a very raging track. The fact that Sylvain can play the guitar very well becomes pretty clear while listening to Renaissances.
Besides the clean vocals, which as I said earlier are not to my liking, Renaissances sounds very nice. The Dawn Razor for sure delivered a solid album with quite a lot of variation. Especially for a debut album, The Dawn Razor did a pretty good job. For sure recommended for people who like great guitar-tunes in their metal.
Written by Tim van Velthuysen
The Dawn Razor Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment