CoC : Dawn - Naer Solen Gar Niber For Evogher : Review

Dawn - _Naer Solen Gar Niber For Evogher_
(Necropolis, 1995)
by: Brian Meloon (8 out of 10)

On the surface, this would seem to be a disc that I would really like. The music is a fusion of most of the standard styles of northern black metal, reminding me at times of Emperor, Dissection, and The Abyss, but it displays the precision usually only associated with death metal, and they avoid the cheesy corpsepaint and satanic imagery. Actually, they don't look at all like a black metal band from their pictures. The music doesn't heavily rely on keyboards, but is still very melodic, using single-note guitar lines to carry the music most of the time. The production is great: maintaining the heavy guitar distortion, but with a clarity that makes it easy to hear exactly what they are playing ... and the bass is even audible. For some reason, though, I just can't seem to get into it. The playing is very precise; solid but not flashy. The single-note melody lines are often either harmonized or have countermelodies under them, which keeps the music interesting most of the time. Unfortunately, they never really put things together to make a great song. Most of the songs end up somewhere above average. Also, I can't tell the songs apart. This is in part due to the generally high quality of the songs, plus the fact that most of the songs are medium length, and usually contain a lot of sections per song, although they do tend to repeat sections in them a little too often. The album as a whole also lacks the variety necessary to differentiate the songs from each other. Still, this makes for a nice listen, and for a debut, it's very impressive.

(article published 14/3/1996)

ALBUMS
3/10/1998	D Schinzel	9	Dawn - Slaughtersun (Crown of the Triarchy)
10/11/1996	D Schinzel	8	Dawn - Sorgh Pa Svarte Vingar Flogh